JoDonna and Family
Quinn and George enjoyed the amazing spring break weather - swinging, bike riding and playing in the treehouse.
New member to the Family: We added a new “fur” family member. Her name is Goldie, and she is a 3-year-old Golden Retriever. She is the sweetest girl and we just love her.
Quinn's First Communion: Family and friends gathered to celebrate Quinn’s first communion.
Staff visits the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas
Kari, Wen-Chieh, Linda and Miranda visited the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. CHC/SEK is unique for a lot of reasons, as we discussed in Project Staff meeting, but one feature that sticks out the most is their level of innovation in service delivery. You rarely ever hear of a FQHC offering CT scans! They are one of the largest rural FQHCs in the nation, with many locations in SEK and now in Oklahoma. We spent time with the CHC/SEK leadership team at their Pittsburg facility. While we have long been familiar with this FQHC “system,” we learned more about the latest challenges in providing quality, comprehensive community health services and have several takeaways that inform our work at KHI around issues such as workforce, facility certifications, population health programs, etc.
NNPHI conference – May 17-19, New Orleans
The sole national gathering that promotes and supports the efforts of the country's public health institutions is the NNPHI Annual Conference. Members of NNPHI organize conference sessions that examine novel ideas and tactics for promoting healthy communities at the local, state, and federal levels. Kari Bruffett, Tatiana Lin, Wyatt Beckman and Miranda Steele all attended the conference. Tatiana and Wyatt presented on the HI-C Toolbox.
Historic Ritchie House – KHI Service Day
The Kansas Health Institute staff volunteered their time at the Historic Ritchie House on June 19, 2022. In observance of Juneteenth, staff took the time to hear more about Topeka's racial equality history, visited the Ritchie Home on the Kansas African American History Trail and assisted the Shawnee County Historical Society with yard work and house cleaning. Thank you staff for a fantastic day of service!
Tatiana, Wyatt and Samiyah Participate in Pathways to a Healthy Kansas Meetings and Site Visits
Pathways to a Healthy Kansas combines community-wide evidence-based solutions and promising practices for improving active living, healthy eating and tobacco prevention to make a large impact across multiple sectors in communities. The program provides community coalitions with the tools and resources needed to engage their communities and remove barriers to healthy living. The KHI Pathways team provides technical support around data, evaluation and Health in All Policies. Wyatt created the Pathways Data dashboard listing current and past recipients and packages of work.
In June, Samiyah and Tatiana traveled to visit Pathways site coordinators. The Pathways project is a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas initiative for which KHI is one of the technical assistance providers. Samiyah visited Cowley, Labette, Montgomery, Cherokee (city of Columbus) and Harvey counties. Tatiana visited Barber, Kearny and Wichita counties.
These visits included sites in both their first and second years of the Pathways initiative. It was incredibly helpful to see the communities and better understand the context in which community coordinators are doing this work.
The Pathways team met the Healthy Harvey Coalition for a working lunch at Prairy Market and Deli who received a Phase One Pathways grant to improve nutritional labeling and increase healthier menu items. Samiyah
The Pathways team visited the Caney Valley Agape Network, a food pantry in Montgomery County’s Caney, Kansas. The food pantry showed us their implementation of the SWAP guidelines.
We visited the Fresh Start Youth Garden Project in Coffeyville, Kansas. The garden is thriving, and they’ve just built a cooler to allow them to better store produce for distribution to the community. Samiyah
Wyatt attends 21C Learning Community meeting in Alexandria, Virginia
Wyatt Beckman attended the Kickoff for the 21st Century Learning Community through PHNCI and PHAB, in person. He was there through his work with the Center for Sharing Public Health Services. He led two breakout sessions on public health service sharing.
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