The vision of the Utah Department of Health and Human Services:

“The Department of Health and Human Services will advocate for, support, and serve all individuals and communities in Utah. We will ensure all Utahns have fair and equitable opportunities to live safe and healthy lives. We will achieve this through effective policy and a seamless system of services and programs.”

The Division of Family Health in the DHHS has four Offices; the Office of Maternal and Child Health (MCH), the Office of Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN), the Office of Early Childhood (EC) and the Office of Coordinated Care and Regional Support (CC&RS).

Utah Title V oversight is maintained by the Title V/MCH and CSHCN Office Directors. Both Directors and their staff serve as conveners, collaborators, and partners in addressing MCH/CSHCN issues. The mission of the MCH Office is to improve the health of Utah’s mothers, children and families. The mission of the CSHCN Office is to improve the health and quality of life for CSHCN and their families through early screening and detection, data integration, care coordination, education, interventions, and life transitions. Together, with other Department programs, our goal is to improve the health outcomes of all Title V populations.

In November 2022, the DHHS established the Office of Early Childhood. This Office promotes and enhances positive growth, development, and learning for every Utah child from birth through age eight.

The Office of CC&RS's mission is to provide intensive care coordination to children, youth and families with serious emotional disorders, conduct independent review for residential placement, improve access to evidence-based treatment, identify service gaps, develop service plans, and identify resources and services.

The MCH/CSHCN Offices assess the health of our populations, provide education, assess current and long-term needs, implement programs, convene stakeholders, and prioritize the issues for our populations. We navigate the public health and political climate of our state and strive to provide the best services with limited dollars. Stakeholder and family involvement is a key component in all of our efforts and provides us the direction and focus for our work.

The MCH/CSHCN Offices work with Department staff, local health departments (LHD), and stakeholders, to accomplish NPM/SPM goals. There is a lead staff person responsible for each NPM/SPM and that person coordinates activities, documents progress for Block Grant reporting, tracks data, and monitors current evidence related to their performance measure.

Utah’s LHDs were actively involved in the 2020 Needs Assessment process and their activities are aligned with the NPM/SPM’s selected for the upcoming 5-year period. The Title V/MCH Office Director meets with the Nursing Directors bi-monthly to provide updates and to assess their progress on meeting objectives. The LHDs provide year-end reports to document outcomes.

The provision of services for Title V populations are provided through Department staff, LHDs, memorandums of agreement, service contracts, bids for proposals (when needed) and in-kind contributions from partners and stakeholders.

Title V Framework

Utah aligns its programs and activities with the “10 Essential Public Health Services to Promote Maternal and Child Health” framework. This model provides a well-rounded strategy that allows Utah to incorporate assessment, policy development, and assurance components within all of its programs. Utah ensures the State Action plan activities are linked to the 10 Essential MCH Public Health Services. Utah is stronger in some of the areas, but we are working to improve and become equally aligned across all services. A few examples are provided for each of the 10 Essential Services.

Examples of how Utah’s Title V programs promote Maternal and Child Health are presented below:

Image 2. Essential Public Health Services to Promote Maternal and Child Health in America

Utah’s Title V Program supports staff participation in partner workgroups and advisory committees. This collaboration allows staff to share their expertise while also learning about issues facing MCH/CSHCN populations. Their participation assures that Utah’s Title V program priorities are known and that efforts are collaborative, not duplicative. Title V staff participate in the following:

• Autism Council of Utah
• Baby Watch Early Intervention Interagency Coordinating Council
• Coordinating Council for Persons with Disabilities
• Early Childhood Utah Council
• Family to Family Network-Utah Parent Center
• Intermountain Adult to Youth Committees
• Intermountain Healing Hearts
• Maternal Mental Health Policy Group
• Medical Home Portal Advisory Committee
• Help Me Grow Utah
• Utah Children’s Care Coordination Network
• Utah Developmental Disabilities Committee
• Utah Down Syndrome Foundation
• Utah Oral Health Coalition

Additionally, Title V programs convene/lead numerous committees that work to serve Title V populations. These include:

• Children’s Hearing Aid Advisory Committee
• CSHCN Advisory Committee
• Cytomegalovirus Workgroup
• Early Childhood Utah Advisory Council (Subcommittees include - Promoting Health and Access to Medical Homes, Early Care and Education, Social Emotional and Mental Health, Parent Engagement Support and Education, and lastly, Data Research and Policy)
• Early Hearing Intervention & Detection, Baby Watch Early Intervention, Parent Infant Program thru Utah School for Deaf & Blind Work Group
• Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Collaborative Committee
• Kurt Oscarson Children’s Organ Transplant Fund Board
• Medical Home Stakeholder Group
• Newborn Screening Advisory Committee
• Pediatric Audiology Work Group
• Perinatal Mortality Review (infant and maternal mortality)
• Transition to Adult Stakeholder Group
• Utah Women and Newborns Quality Collaborative
• Newborn Hearing Screening Advisory Committee
• Utah Autism Initiative Committee
• Adult Autism Treatment Account
• Utah Registry for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (URADD) Committee

Utah aligns its CSHCN services with AMCHP’s National Consensus Standard for Systems of Care for CYSHCN. Utah supports a coordinated care model that is inclusive of the family. The Integrated Services Program holds weekly meetings in which a variety of State stakeholders and partners come together to work on medical home, transition and care coordination efforts in order to reduce the burdens of the system's diversity on families. Additionally, utilizing virtual technology has reduced travel, coordination of scheduling, and allowed for different service providers to be on calls with families. Utah uses evidence-based approaches and values data to support initiatives to ensure a solid and robust foundation.

MCH/CSHCN staff work collaboratively with the Office of Health Equity and the Office of American Indian/Alaska Native Health and Family Services to identify and address the needs of Utah’s diverse populations. Additionally, when an emerging issue or need arises, MCH/CSHCN staff assess if other programs are currently addressing the same issue with other populations and discuss how to collaborate. MCH and CSHCN Offices take an active role in creating and engaging committees to ensure a diversified perspective is understood in order to effectively implement programmatic activities.

The Office of Health Equity offers professional development trainings through their website. Training is open to any employee interested in expanding their knowledge of Health Equity. The purpose of these training is to assist teams, make the Department a more welcoming, equitable, and inclusive organization. Topics currently include:

• Health in 3-D: Understanding Diversity, Determinants and Disparities
• A Class about CLAS
• For Me, For Us: Promoting healthy weight, access to health care and healthy births to diverse Utah communities
• Coming soon: Health equity professional development video series and registration tool for state employees and local health departments

On a larger State level, Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox is committed to providing the best programs and services for customers. The Governor’s “One Utah Roadmap” outlines policy priorities for the State of Utah including improving government efficiency to become more responsive to the state’s customers by streamlining and modernizing state government, addressing social determinants of health, improving racial and gender disparities, education innovation, health security and many others. In February 2023, Governor Cox announced a new initiative for state employees to be ‘Recklessly Good’. Governor Cox is encouraging staff to look at their roles from the customer’s perspective and to use a creative and resourceful mindset to explore how to serve customers better; to think outside the box to help customers solve their concerns.