every woman nc blog
Last month, one of our long-time staff members, Leslie deRosset, MPH, left our Campaign to pursue higher education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Leslie was our Latino Campaign coordinator who worked tirelessly across the state since 2005 to provide folic acid education and other preconception health messages to the Hispanic community in North Carolina.
Leslie is now working toward a PhD at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the Maternal and Child Health Department with a minor in Epidemiology. She plans to continue to focus on preconception health and life course issues related to Hispanics/Latinos and their birth outcomes. Additionally, she is working as a Trainee for a national reproductive, perinatal, pediatric epidemiology grant.
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May 30, 2012 was a great day for preconception health in the East! While the day might have gloomy and ended in storms and flash floods, within the walls of the Pasquotank County Health Department in Elizabeth City there was a bright glimmer of light in the world of women’s health. I was able to participate in the first of several Regional Preconception Health Meetings sponsored by the Women’s Health Branch of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.
As the Eastern Regional Coordinator for the March of Dimes NC Preconception Health Campaign, I had the honor of providing the first presentation: Preconception Health 101. I gave the participants a general overview of preconception health and the ways in which it is being addressed in NC, especially through the Campaign. In addition, Judy Ruffin and Alvina Long Valentin, from the Women’s Health Branch, presented information on progress being made in preconception health in NC, regionally and nationally....
This guest blog post was written by our former Triad Regional Coordinator, Stacie Turpin Saunders. Stacie has joined Alamance County Health Department where she serves as the Health Education Supervisor. Her time spent working with us was brief, but exceptional, and we know she’ll be fantastic at her new position. Best of all, she remains a dedicated advocate for and partner with the March of Dimes NC Preconception Health Campaign.
I knew it was going to be an awesome day when I started my trek to the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro on May 16 for the APPCNC Annual Conference. The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina (APPCNC) conference brings together people across the state working on teen pregnancy prevention to share ideas and learn from one another. Now usually, being an exhibitor at a conference doesn’t cause this much excitement in me, but today was different. Only a few miles separated me from being in the presence of two...
National Women's Health Week ends tomorrow and things are winding to a close here at the March of Dimes NC Preconception Health Campaign. We finished our activities for the week with a Webinar yesterday entitled, "Women and health: Getting your message across to patients."
The Webinar was presented by our communications coordinator, Megan Fazekas, and it focused on the basics of social marketing and the history of the Campaign's social marketing projects. Megan explained in great detail all of our social marketing campaigns, such as folic acid, healthy weight and preconception health message bundling.
If you attended our Webinar, please do...
We just hosted our very first Webinar on Reproductive Life Planning as a part of National Women's Health Week. We are so pleased that we had 97 people on the call!
Regional coordinators, Rovonda Bradford, MA and Sarah Wright, MA, did a fantastic job outlining the purpose of reproductive life planning and how to use it in a clinical setting. We hope that all of the participants were able to improve their reproductive life planning counseling skills and service delivery.
The Webinar on Reproductive Life Planning is just one of many examples of the kind of training and outreach that our Campaign does. For more information...
National Women's Health week is May 13-19. The March of Dimes North Carolina Preconception Health Campaign is celebrating the week by offering two free lunchtime webinars. We invite you to join us!
May 15, 2012 – 12:00 – 1:15 p.m.
Reproductive Life Planning: Simple strategies to help your patients plan ahead
Presented by Rovonda Bradford, MA and Sarah Wright, MA
Attendees will:
- Understand the role of preconception health counseling in women’s health services
- Increase knowledge about the key components of reproductive life planning
- Understand how reproductive life planning relates to opportunistic preconception health counseling
- Increase awareness about the importance of counseling all female patients of childbearing age about reproductive life planning
- Improve reproductive life planning counseling skills
- Learn strategies to improve...
Eastern Regional Coordinator, Rovonda Bradford, MA, received the City of Goldsboro Annual Human Relations Award on February 18, 2012 for her service to the community. This award is only given to one individual per year and is jointly sponsored by the City of Goldsboro and Wayne County.
According to the Goldsboro News Argus, Rovonda was honored for volunteering with dozens of causes. Specifically, she was recognized for leading health conferences, helping organize health fairs, facilitating Focus on Youth curriculum for teenagers, assisting at debutante balls, visiting the sick and shut-in, working at her church, and participating in food and clothing drives.
“Although I don't participate in community outreach and service to be recognized, it feels wonderful to be...
Dr. Deborah Norton is a champion for women, babies and neural tube defect (NTD) prevention. While pursuing her MPH in 1995, she became fascinated with the Folic Acid Campaign (originally known as the North Carolina Folic Acid Council). Dr. Norton, Women's Health Clinic Program Manager for Wake County Human Services, continues to be involved with the campaign by educating all of her patients, every day, about the importance of folic acid.
“Taking one multivitamin [with folic acid] daily is such an easy step for women to take, and has such enormous benefit! It prevents a life-time of suffering for the child and the family,” said Norton.
Taking a multivitamin is important for all women of childbearing age because it reduces their risk of having a pregnancy affected by a neural tube defect (NTD). If all women were to take 400 micrograms of folic acid every day, the amount found in most multivitamin supplements, then up to 70 percent of NTDs...
Nothing could be finer than to be at East Carolina in August! As an East Carolina University alumna, I found it to be a great honor and privilege to take part in the Volunteer Service Learning Center’s Annual Service Fair which took part in conjunction with the “Get a Clue” event that is held at the beginning of each academic school year in the heart of campus. This event is designed to bring awareness to new and returning students concerning the agencies and organizations that are on campus and in the surrounding community. The March of Dimes NC Preconception Health Campaign was one of 50 vendors that took part in the service fair along with countless others who filled the University yard with tables, tents, giveaways and much more.
I took this opportunity to distribute multivitamins and preconception health...
The regional coordinators sure have been hard at work conducting large group trainings for the Young Moms Connect project!
For those of you who are not yet familiar with the project, Young Moms Connect: Communities Supporting Young Families is a federal grant from the Office of Adolescent Health that is administered by the North Carolina Division of Public Health Women’s Health Branch. The March of Dimes North Carolina Preconception Health Campaign was contracted by the State to complete several facets of the Young Moms Connect project.
The purpose of this project is to offer support to women ages 13-24 years who are pregnant and/or parenting with self-sufficiency, health maintenance, and parenting skills. It also aims to bring together community partners to address the unique challenges faced by these young women using collaborative, multi-faceted strategies. Currently, Young Moms Connect is operating in five North Carolina counties: Bladen, Nash, Onslow...
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