Quarterly Meeting Minutes

Quarterly Coalition Meeting
CHI Lakeside Hospital
2/6/18

Watch meeting video here.

1. Member Introductions:  Heather Biggens-Williams, NE CHS; Rita Bixby, Filmore County Hospital; Arli Boustead, CHI Health; Peggy Brown, NPQIC; Stacie Burnett; Melanie Bussey, Methodist Physician's Clinic; Holly Dingman, Children's Center for the Child and Community; Tami Frank, PHL; Katie Graves, SCHD; Kelli Hansen, NE BFC; Leah James; Tiffany Keller, CHI Health; Michelle Leahy, SCHD; Lora Marshbanks, WIC DCHD; Kaiya Mears; VNA; Jackie Moline, NE DHHS; Tracy Moore, Fremont Health; Deanna Stoffel, WIC; Melissa Topil, Nurture Omaha; Elizabeth Zimmerman, NCHS; April Welterberg, Fusion; Melanie Horstman, Nurture Omaha; Angie Cantrell, MilkWorksO; Rachel Sazama, CDHD WIC; Angela Vogel, LLL; Kailey Snyder, UNO; Diane Erdmann, Breastfeeding Support & Supplies of Omaha; Karen Bagniewski, Methodist Physician's Clinic; Micaela Diarrassouba, Fusion; Crissy Murphy, WIC Family Service; Caitlin Neidow, WIC Family Service; Corrine Jarecke, LLCHD; Deanne Birkestrand
2. Remembering Sara Furr: Sara was one of the 7 original women to start Milk Works and was a local National La Leche League Leader.  She passed away in late December.  Sara was an amazing advocate for moms and babies and other BF leaders!  While there is no way to adequately convey our appreciation for Sara’s contributions to the world, MilkWorks has established a fund in memory of Sara that will provide baby carriers to mothers without the means to purchase a carrier. One of Sara’s greatest joys was carrying her children close to her heart. She believed strongly that children learn to love by knowing they are safe and secure.  Donate here: https://milkworksorg.presencehost.net/you-can-help/donate.html
3. Breastfeeding Super Mom: Goal 4 works with moms on education and advocacy.  Want to reach out to moms and share their stories to empower other moms and reach their goal.  Working on a form to nominate a super mom – so stay tuned for that on social media.  April with Fusion Medical – three kids and continually did more with breastfeeding.  Fusion has been a great support.  When she was bored while pumping the next day her employer put a computer and phone in the lactation space for her.  At Fusion, she’s a top producer and an amazing mom.
4. Group and Community Updates
   1. Fillmore – The grant has legitimized bringing lactation resources in the community.  They’ve jumped off and done quite a bit since being award the grant.  Designed a new breastfeeding class for mothers – new moms and moms who have never breastfed.  It’s an encouraging and welcoming class.  The community doesn’t offer a lot of resources if moms are struggling, so they’re hoping to change that.  It’s also something Rita is passionate about.  February 17th is their first class and they have a lot of moms registered.  They’re offering a twice monthly support group – one at the hospital and one at a local boutique.  They’re also working on training for clinic staff as well.  She’s also working at updating policies at the hospital and would love any resources for this.
   2. Fremont – Presented to the Women’s Leadership Council and was able to get a small grant from them.  They will use the funding to send someone to a CLC course or get a scale.  They’ll also be exhibiting at the fair and use funding for Really? Really. information.  They’ll be presenting to businesses.  They’re also doing a breastfeeding education baby shower at the local coffee shop this spring.  Breastfeeding support groups are going well and they have their WIC peer counselors there too.
   3. Sarpy/Cass County – They’re offering prenatal classes (series of 6 sessions).  The 5th session is newborn care and breastfeeding and partnering with MilkWorksO to do that part of the course.
   4. Lincoln – WIC agencies have streamlined data now and can pull data more easily.  They may be able to share this with the other WIC agencies in the state.  Working on a video series with LNK Health that is focused on the supports within the Lincoln CBI.  Prenatal, hospital, and outpatient support.  Continuing the journal club and will have one in March.  They don’t have the ability to broadcast it but Tami can get you on the list if you want to attend.  WIC Agencies are partnering with UNMC Nursing students to do a survey around self advocacy for moms with breastfeeding.  3-6 moms attend the support groups every week and they’re excited that it continues to grow. 
   5. Kearney - Excited in November to have a Dental Hygienist reported on oral and facial myopathy.  It can result from untreated lip and tongue-ties.  KCBI sponsored a training and a speech pathologist attended and joined the KCBI.  A new family physician in town has joined their group.  The training they did was very well attended and well received.  Had a breastfeeding area put in at the mall and baby store and have been really well received.  Moms have expressed a need for the big box stores and a big park.  Working with UNK and have asked them to put in a lactation room in the new Student Union.  The Children’s Museum is revamping a nursing room that will help more moms.  Looking to establish a sponsorship program where local businesses can help them build their funds so they can do more.  They also are planning to do a 5K to raise money for the coalition as well and continue to help workplace breastfeeding education.  They also want to continue to help in the space of breastfeeding provider education and hopefully do a community needs assessment annually. 
   6. Crete - Crete Community Breastfeeding Initiative (CBI)  Possible Community Partners: BVCA/WIC Program- Jaime Vyhnalek, Crete Area Medical Center-Rebekah Mussman, Early Head Start- Penny Thompson, Public Health Solutions-Laura Wooders, Sixpence Program- Fabiola Dimas.  Our first meeting was on February 5, 2018 at the Crete Area Medical Center, Present: Jaimie Vyhnalek, Rebekah Mussman, Penny Thompson and Fabiola Dimas.  We discussed how to create and promote the Mommy to Mommy breastfeeding support group.  We will develop a survey to assess the community needs and interest. It will include questions such as: How often the group should meet? Which days are the best? Topics of interest, etc.  Survey will be delivery through the WIC clinic, CAMC clinic, and prenatal home visitation programs.  Surveys results should be available by March 5th.  Training needs CAMC has two Certified Lactation Counselor. They are looking to send two more nurses to be certified within the next year.  By the end of February the Sixpence program will have four CLC and two of them will be bilingual.  The WIC clinic has one on call CLC that is available over the phone if a WIC client needs assistance.  The “Welcome Baby Packages” community partners do not have the resources available to buy materials needed to provide the packages at this moment.  Programs will send information to the CAMC to be included in a video production to promote home visitation programs.  I will share the survey results and we will prepare a plan.
   7. NPQIC – The previous two years have worked on breastfeeding practices at hospitals, improving MPINC scores.  NE ranked 50/52.  The survey has been revised and hope it will come out in 2018 to see if they’ve made progress.  Collecting outcome data so we can track progress.  53 birthing hospitals participate.
   8. La Leche League - In the last half of 2017 NE LLL held 111 total meetings. 50% of them were "cafe-style" meetings, so not the regulated series meetings. Throughout these meetings 233 people were served and given education. The Leaders of LLL of Nebraska had a total of 240 individual one on one contacts with breastfeeding mothers.   72% of the Groups in the Nebraska Area use social media as a means for communication, promotion, and education.  Our website LLLof NE.org averages 250 unique visitors per week.  Our area coordinator of leaders is Rachel Tran >> rachelllleader@gmail.com  New number for all NE LLL is 402-413-1250.
   9. Douglas County BF Coalition – Group has been meeting.  Working on building a collective impact model and the whole concept is bringing all stakeholders around the table, not just public health.  Create goals and mutually work together to impact breastfeeding.  Next step is figuring out who to be around the table and how to affect work in the community.
   10. Council Bluffs Group has been bringing 10 counties in Iowa together and hoping to work together with the NE BFC.
   11. North Omaha Breastfeeding – CBEs in North Omaha have been functioning out of Charles Drew Omaha Healthy Start.  We lost Sara Brown, the leader of this group, but CHI is working with Charles Drew to help them take next steps.
   12. MilkWorks added a second return to work for moms class.  They do these twice a month – second and fourth Tuesdays from 6-8pm and right now it’s free.  They can register online or attend online.  First, third, and sometimes fifth Tuesdays are support groups.
   13. Children’s Center for the Child and Community – Two LCs at Children’s have been having conversation about reviving the Omaha Journal Club.  This provided CERPs, CMEs, and Nursing Credits.  They’re working internally with the office of education to see if they can get it up and running.  It will likely be in person, but there will be a virtual option as well.  A survey will go out soon on topics, etc.
   14. Diversity Inclusion Group – Tina can no longer serve as the chair of this group due to her new position but we’d love someone new to take this over.  Consider and include the idea of diversity in all areas of our coalition and areas of health.  They try to meet quarterly before the Coalition meetings.  The last meeting was in January.  Had a representative of tribal groups, Leah Bellgrave, speak at their meeting.  April 18th will be the minority health conference for anyone who may want to attend.
5. Leadership Team Update
   1. Financial – Kelli Hansen kelli@nebreastfeeding.org
      1. We are halfway through our DHHS Year 5 grant.  At this time we’ve requested about $14,000 of the $30,000 and look to be on track for the rest of the grant.  We also received $68,000 from CHI Health to do courses like CLC and the Lactation Management Exam prep, as well as our Business Case Training with Brenda Bandy.  We’ve used 55% of those funds as well.
   2. Project and Communication Updates - Kelli Hansen kelli@nebreastfeeding.org
      1. Stats: We’ve had 1,864 visits to our site since our last meeting (Nov-Jan).  This is up 5% from the previous quarter.
      2. 2,361 “Likes” on Facebook, up 58 since our last meeting!
      3. 439 Twitter followers, a 2% increase from last quarter.
   3. Membership – We started our new membership drive at the Olson Center in August.  As of right now, we’ve had 225 new and renewing members.  If you haven’t done so yet, please do!
      1. We’ve also created a new Partnership packet and want to thank our current funding partners: CHI Health, Children’s Center for the Child and Community, and the Department of Health and Human Services.  We also want to thank our fiscal agent, MilkWorks.
   4. BFF Awards since our last meeting:
      1. We have not had any new BFF Awards since our last meeting.  If you’ve had a great experience with your employer, or know someone who has, please nominate them here: http://nebreastfeeding.org/business-of-breastfeeding/bff.html
      2. The majority of our upcoming projects are tied to different strategic plan goal priorities, so we will discuss those in momentarily!
6. Strategic Plan Update:
   1. Goal #1 – Holly Dingman hdingman@childrensomaha.org  - Sustaining the coalition is the primary goal.  DHHS is writing a new competitive grant and we’re hoping to partner again and assist them in .  We are also looking at other ways to continue to educate funds and updated our organizational membership to include sponsorship.  MilkWorks no longer has capacity to serve as our fiscal agent after this grant cycle, so we’ve been focused on what to do moving forward.  Do we seek another fiscal agent or pursue 501c3 status?  We’ve had a lot of healthy conversations about this and reached out to Omaha Community Foundation to talk to us about evaluating our readiness to move to our own non-profit.  She set out 7 criteria to evaluate and we’ve worked through these.  38 states are their own stand alone 501c3s with varying budgets and varying staff capacity.  Our leadership team has been full for 8 years that would need to transition into a board.  We have a strategic plan through 2018 and we have had 9 years of proven programming.  We’ve done many trainings, assessments, held quarterly meetings with great attendance, and served as the network for lactation professionals in the state, and the development of the CBIs.  Our fiscal needs and fundraising capacity is the area we have the most questions about and the LT is really looking closely at this whether it’s more opportunity or risk.  We want to come up with a business plan for the coalition around operational pieces and opportunities for more financing.  We also want to focus on board planning.  We also wanted to structure our coalition more to include more member engagement.
   2. Goal #2 – Arli Boustead arli.boustead@alegent.org  - Focused on provider education and through the planning and surveyed providers.  One place to focus was putting together a toolkit around the Really? Really. campaign and train local providers.  Have resources, materials, etc to make the connection with OB and family providers in any community.  Got a great start on a PowerPoint presentation to take as a package deal to providers or give to a CBI community to take.  It doesn’t address cultural differences so we still need to see how it is applicable to all groups.  They’re also looking for more volunteers to help finish the packaged campaign.  The survey that was sent to providers showed that providers have lots of educational needs but no time in their day to coach moms on breastfeeding.  We concluded this isn’t the right group to give the moms helps, so we need the lactation professionals.  MilkWorks, NE BFC, and NPQIC have been meeting looking into the option of telehealth as a means to help out of state moms.  Lisa White over Medicaid of NE is supportive of this plan and Peggy is going to meet with them to see if they would use telehealth with Medicaid moms.
   3. Goal #3 – Kelli Hansen kelli@nebreastfeeding.org Last quarter Nicole Osborne from WorkWell and myself met with Brenda Bandy, Executive Director from the Kansas Breastfeeding Coalition.  She trained us on her business case for breastfeeding employer meetings and we hit the ground running!  In Omaha we met with Aureus Medical, First National, Children’s Hospital, Oath (formerly Yahoo), and Mutual of Omaha.  All of these employers seem to be doing great work for their employees and First National by far goes above and beyond by providing a mom’s support group and contracts with Nurture Omaha LLC for employees to receive consults in the office!  In Lincoln we met with Lincoln Industries, Hexagon, and Molex. These were more industrial employers and it was very interesting to see the spectrum of a very prepared and supportive employer like Lincoln Industries, down to a more skeptical, resistant employer like Molex.  It definitely solidified the fact that there is lots of work to be done!
   4. Goal #4 – Amy Potratz japotratz21@gmail.com   - Working with breastfeeding moms returning to work and helping them be successful.  We had 1000 moms surveyed and working on a supermom concept.  She overcame adversity, she has a great relationship with her employer, etc.  They’re working on reaching out to
   5. Goal #5 – Tami Frank tfrank@healthylincoln.org - Focused on Community Breastfeeding Initiatives.  Hoping to reach out to CBI communities in the coming weeks to reach out and see what your goals are and how NE BFC can support you.  We’re all doing different work, but some has overlaps so we’d love to share resources so people aren’t reinventing the wheel.  Hope to start regular communications with the communities to help provide technical assistance and ongoing communication so we can all support each other.
7. Next meeting is May 1, 2018 and we will let you know where it will be just as soon as we know!  We’re hoping one of our new CBI sites will host.