Delaware’s MCH Block Grant is complimented by other funding sources within the Family Health Systems (FHS) that increase our data capacity efforts, which support up to date MCH data and information systems. This ensures our program managers, epidemiologists, partners, and stakeholders have MCH data collection and analysis capacity. They are then able to leverage this capacity to make data informed decisions, particularly regarding program planning. For example, access to MCH data allows for population assessment, program development, and progress monitoring of the MCH Block grant State Action Plan. This in turn, facilitates the creation of effective programs, which leads to health improvements in the MCH population.
The mission of the Division of Public Health is to protect and enhance the health of the people of Delaware. The Division accomplishes its mission by:
- working together with others;
- addressing issues that affect the health of Delawareans;
- keeping track of the State’s health;
- promoting positive lifestyles;
- responding to critical health issues and disasters;
- promoting the availability of health services.
The accomplishment of this mission will facilitate the Division in realizing its vision of creating an environment in which people in Delaware can reach their full potential for a healthy life. The Division of Public Health (DPH) Family Health Systems section solicits services in the area of maternal, child, adolescent, children and youth with special health care needs, health epidemiology, research, and evaluation. It is the intention of FHS to integrate data and epidemiology into research and evaluation of programs and activities.
In addition to our State Systems Development Initiative (SSDI) grant, other key components of our MCH epidemiological and data enhancement activities support our Title V program and activities. Family Health Systems (FHS) is committed to contracting consistent, high-quality support in research, epidemiology and program evaluation for our section and its associated programs.
Our ERE contracting services maintain and improve existing methods of information collection for FHS MCH statistical analysis. Examples include linked infant birth and death records, poor birth outcomes registry, and birth certificate data analysis.
The contract covers developing new methods to collect key information for decision-making and research. This can include merging existing sources of information (e.g., population-based information, surveillance systems, survey information and program/service utilization information). Project examples include data collections methods to assess the impact of nurse home visiting, data collection methods to assess the impact of preconception care and enhanced prenatal care services, and literature review of provider cultural competence and health equity.
Our Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) Needs Assessment was also facilitated by our ERE contracting services. MCH leveraged and aligned the activities of our MIECHV Needs Assessment as well as our Title V Five-Year Needs Assessment. Combining efforts to gather the information and data required for both needs assessments helped leverage staff and fiscal resources across the two programs and aligned the data collected by each to better meet the needs of women, infants, and children in the state of Delaware. Coordinating the two needs assessments, helped avoid duplication of effort and strengthened a statewide approach to addressing the needs of young children and their families.
Our ERE contracting services also aims to improve access to and use of information in addition to translating information into an easily understandable form to inform the public and key stakeholders. Project examples include data analysis and presentation of data for the annual Delaware Healthy Mother & Infant Consortium (DHMIC) report, birth defects registry analysis, and social distal factors report.
Forward Consultants also designs and implements research studies to assess program impact. This includes natural experiments, prospective studies, case control studies, and/or cross-sectional studies. Research studies may rely on quantitative methods, qualitative methods, or a mix of the two. Some project examples include one research study proposed by Data/Science Committee of the DHMIC, and a study to assess the impact of nurse home visiting.
The FHS contracted services with Forward Consultants design and implements program evaluation to measure whether program goals are met, and activities are effective. This may include process evaluation but should primarily focus on outcome and impact evaluation. Some project examples may include evaluation of preconception and enhanced prenatal care programs, evaluation plan and two surveys funded through the federal Pregnancy Risk Education Prevention (PREP) grant, Healthy Women, Healthy Babies (HWHB) Program, community health program, and Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) activities.
In addition, the ERE contracted services provide expertise with respect to all phases of statistical interpretation related to family health epidemiologic topics. This includes interpreting infant birth certificate data, newborn screening, birth defects surveillance data, hospital discharge data, Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), and other national data sets to answer Maternal Child Health (MCH) questions posed by consumers and/or stakeholders.
Lastly, our contracted services also require Forward Consultants to analyze and prepare reports in order to communicate research and surveillance trends to diverse audiences. This also requires prepared ad-hoc reports and data summaries, as requested by DPH and DHMIC.
The following are examples of programs that require ERE services:
-
Healthy Women, Healthy Babies
- This is composed of: preconception care, prenatal care, interconception care services, and infant care (home visiting).
- Adolescent health services through school-based wellness centers
- Children with special health care needs (traumatic brain injury, birth defects and newborn screening)
- Violence and injury preventions services
- Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring (PRAMS) system
- Fetal Infant Mortality Review (FIMR)
- Reproductive health
- Women’s health
- Men’s health
- Community health
In 2019, DPH launched a data portal allowing Delawareans to assess the overall health of their communities. The My Healthy Community data portal delivers neighborhood-focused population health, environmental and social determinant of health data to the public. The innovative technological showpiece allows users to navigate the data at the smallest geographical area available, to understand and explore data about the factors that influence health.
This is a perfect example of how Delaware is making data more transparent, accessible, and easy to understand. Sharing community-level statistics and data allows Delawareans to understand what is occurring in their neighborhoods, make informed decisions about their health, and take steps to continue improving our quality of life.
Delaware residents are able to explore a variety of data indicators in the following categories: community characteristics, the environment, chronic disease, and mental health and substance use. Air quality data, asthma incidence data, public and private drinking water results, drug overdose and death data, community safety, maternal and child health, healthy lifestyles, health services utilization, infectious diseases, education, socioeconomic influencers, lead poisoning, suicide and homicide, and populations vulnerable to climate change are all currently available.
DPH believes that our health and the environment in which we live are inherently connected and the My Healthy Community portal will allow communities, governments and stakeholders to better understand the issues that impact our health, determine priorities and track progress. Communities can use the data to initiate community-based approaches, support and facilitate discussions that describe and define population health priorities and educate residents about their community’s health and the environment in which they live.
Residents can search health indicators by street address, ZIP code, census tract, neighborhood, town/city, county and state. In addition, they can compare their community’s health measures with other Delaware communities, their county, and the state, as well as view data trends over time. To ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), not all data can be made available at the community level therefore, the system is designed to provide data for the smallest geographic area possible.
The Division of Public Health in convinced that access to data is a key factor in making progress toward a stronger and healthier Delaware. The ability to easily access such crucial information like substance use and overdose data by zip code enables Delawareans to compare it to larger areas and examine trends. For the first time, Emergency Department non-fatal drug overdose data from DPH, and Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) data will be available thanks to a partnership with the Division of Professional Regulation.
Addiction, air quality, chronic disease and drinking water quality impact every one of us and when communities become aware of the level at which these issues are occurring in their neighborhoods, it can spur action that can improve the quality of life for current and future generations.
My Healthy Community had been years in the making through a partnership among several DPH programs, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), the Division of Substance Use and Mental Health (DSAMH), and the Delaware Health Care Commission (HCC). DPH’s contractor for this project was Green River of Brattleboro, Vermont.
Health and environmental agencies have a long history of separately tracking trends, when, in fact, environmental conditions and health outcomes are often closely related. This public-access portal brings health and environmental data together and puts this information at the fingertips of all Delawareans, including healthcare and environmental professionals.
Additional substance use disorder (SUD) data and additional health indicators were also built to highlight Delaware’s progress in meeting health care benchmarks (obesity, tobacco use, preventable Emergency Department visits, etc.) as part of DHSS’s ongoing efforts to bring transparency to health care spending and to set targets for improving the health of Delawareans. Future funding has been secured data on vulnerable populations and climate change, and for violent death data and internal sharing of timely SUD data.
My Healthy Community encompasses the Delaware Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (EPHTN), and benefits from participation in an Environmental Public Health Tracking Peer-to-Peer Fellowship program through the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), with the Kentucky Department of Health as Delaware’s EPHTN mentor. State of Delaware – My Healthy Community
MCH collaborates with the Division of Public Health’s Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention. The Chronic Disease Prevention Bureau, in the Division's Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Section, manages programs to prevent and control these chronic illnesses. The programs work closely with the Bureau of Health Promotion, whose programs address the major risk factors for the leading causes of death, such as tobacco use, physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and obesity.
Over the last three decades, scientific evidence has clearly demonstrated how personal behaviors affect development of diseases. Smoking, physical inactivity, poor eating habits, obesity, alcohol abuse, and other risk factors can lead to a variety of chronic health problems-like heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, or lung diseases. Lifestyle behaviors increase the risk of communicable diseases such as AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and vaccine-preventable diseases. Injuries from violence and accidents also may be caused by behavioral risks.
As a result of this evidence, public health professionals are focusing on ways to help people change their behaviors to reduce risks and prevent illness or premature death. To accomplish this, public health researchers need to gather information about health risks. How many people are at risk? What populations are most affected? Are there new or emerging health concerns which need to be addressed? Health agencies use this information to plan, implement and evaluate health education and disease prevention programs for the public.
The Behavioral Risk Factor Survey (BRFS) is an annual survey of Delaware’s adult population about behaviors which increase the risk of disease, premature death, and disability. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a cooperative effort of the Delaware Division of Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is primarily funded by CDC.
These data are gathered through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). In the early 1980s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with several states, including Delaware, to create the BRFSS and address these behavioral health risks. This unique, state-based surveillance system is the largest continuously conducted telephone health survey in the world. The BRFSS includes all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and three territories. The sample is randomized by state, producing more accurate data for state planning. The state-based system allows states to add questions of local interest.
Delaware has been collecting behavioral risk factor data continuously since 1990. Interviewing is conducted every month of every year, and data are analyzed on a calendar-year basis. The BRFS made methodological improvements in 2011 to address social and technical changes in telephone usage. The annual sample in Delaware is about 4,000 adults age 18 and older.
The random-sample telephone survey is conducted for the Division of Public Health by Abt Associates, Inc. Data from the survey are used by both public and private health providers to plan health programs and to track progress toward the state’s health goals.
To Top
Narrative Search