Department News

CHE Staff Secures Large Donation for Prison Breastfeeding Program

March 2, 2020 | Incarcerated women who are new breastfeeding moms at the J. Aaron Hawkins Sr. Center in Wrightsville, Arkansas, will have access to over 200 pounds of breastfeeding supplies recently donated by Medela, a leading manufacturer of breast pumps in the United States.

The donation came about through UAMS’ partnership with the Hawkins’ Growing Together program. Growing Together was formed to support the needs of incarcerated pregnant and postpartum women in Arkansas. It includes a lactation program, prenatal education classes, and a mental health support group. Childbirth support will launch soon as part of a pilot grant provided by UAMS’ Translational Research Institute.

Melissa Zelinski, Ph.D. with donated boxes from Medela.

Marybeth Curtis, B.S.N., a nurse educator in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, saw the need for breastfeeding supplies and contacted Medela.

Medela gave hospital-grade breast pumps, storage bags, maternity and nursing shirts, lanolin, and other products to the new breastfeeding initiative. The items were donated through Hope Rises, a Little Rock non-profit that offers services to women impacted by addiction, trauma and incarceration.

Annemarie McGahagan, SPAN nutrition coordinator at UAMS, is breastfeeding coordinator for the CDC State Physical Activity and Nutrition grant that helps support Growing Together.

“When Annemarie shared with me the need for breast pumps and supplies for the Growing Together program, my first response was to reach out to Medela,” said Curtis. “I have always been amazed at their generosity. I have learned that acts of charity are waiting all around us once you make the need known.”

Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, spearheads UAMS’ involvement with Growing Together.

Board members of Little Rock non-profit, Hope Rises.

“Gender-responsive programs like Growing Together are critical. Many people don’t realize that over 75% of incarcerated women are of childbearing age and about 4% are pregnant at intake to prison. Few prisons have specialty services available to meet incarcerated pregnant women’s needs. It will take time, but we are working toward that goal,” said Zielinski.

All pregnant women at the Hawkins Unit receive their routine pre- and postnatal care and deliver their babies at UAMS.

Other groups have joined in the Growing Together initiative: UAMS lactation specialists, the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, doctoral-level psychology student interns from UAMS and the University of Central Arkansas who co-lead mental health support groups, retired RNs with the Presbyterian Women USA who teach prenatal classes for the women, and one volunteer who offered to sew lactation capes for the women who would like to use them when breastfeeding during visitation.

For more information, contact Zielinski at mjzielinski@uams.edu.

DFPM-RED Faculty Member Awarded R-21 NIH Grant

Dr. Taren Swindle of UAMS’ Dept of Family and Preventive Medicine, Research and Evaluation Division (DFPM-RED) was recently awarded her first R-21 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The R21 grant mechanism is intended to encourage exploratory/developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development. A brief description of the awarded research is below:

Sustainability of Nutrition and Physical Activity Interventions in Childcare

Effective prevention and intervention programs are needed to increase adherence to cancer prevention guidelines to, in turn, reduce cancer incidence at the population level. Programs that are sustained over many years are likely to have the greatest impact to that end. This proposal will identify predictors of sustainability of nutrition and physical activity programs in childcare and develop sustainability strategies to support prevention programs in this setting.

Project HEAL in the spotlight in Arkansas’ only statewide paper.

UAMS DFPM-RED’s Project HEAL was featured in a story in today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The project launched this year, in partnership with Little Rock nonprofit Better Community Development. The project is funded by a $2.5 million federal grant.

Read the full article HERE.

Home-Visiting Support for Low-Birth-Weight Preterm Infants

UAMS Department of Family and Preventive Medicine (DFPM) and the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) recently published the following report connected to DFPM-RED faculty member Dr. Lorraine McKelvey’s work with Arkansas Home Visiting Networks.

Infants born preterm and with a Low Birth Weight (LBW) have a greater risk for long-term health issues than infants who are born full-term. To reduce that risk and foster better health outcomes, the Following Baby Back Home (FBBH) program offers families of these infants additional support after their discharge from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) through health-centered home visiting services.

This evaluation demonstrates that infants enrolled in FBBH receive more of their suggested childhood vaccinations and have a lower mortality rate than similar infants (matched control group) who are not enrolled in FBBH.

Link to Full Report

‘Stakeholder-Selected Strategies to Support Implementation of WISE’

The UAMS Department of Dietetics and Nutrition will host this presentation featuring DFPM-RED faculty member Taren Swindle, Ph.D. on Thursday, Jan. 9. The presentation will discuss implementation strategies for DFPM-RED’s WISE, a project which models, teaches, and promotes healthy food attitudes in programs that serve children preschool to elementary.

DFPM-RED’s TIPS team releases public Annual Report

The DFPM-RED TIPS team just finished their public-facing annual report today and are excited to share both the results and their new look!

Two years into executing their new evaluation framework, TIPS is seeing impressive survey results and app use statistics that are providing evidence for TIPS’ effectiveness as well as opportunities for growth.

Read the 2018-2019 report here.

About TIPS:

TIPS is a new, innovative parenting education program for parents of children ages birth to 5 years. With the TIPS training and toolkit, people working with parents can

Share recent research through brief, family-friendly messages.
Educate parents without parenting classes.
Respond to parents’ concerns and tailor parenting information to individual families.

TIPS also hosts Naptime Academy, free online professional development for childcare professionals.

WISE receives strongest recommendation from SNAP-ED

You can now find DFPM-RED’s WISE listed as a SNAP-Ed approved intervention on the SNAP-Ed website.

WISE is listed as “research-tested” which is SNAP-ED’s strongest recommendation.

See the WISE SNAP-Ed Toolkit page here.

About the SNAP-Ed Toolkit:

“The Interventions component of the SNAP-Ed Toolkit helps state SNAP-Ed administrative and implementing agencies identify and implement evidence-based obesity prevention and policy, systems, and environmental change (PSE) interventions to include in SNAP-Ed Plans. These interventions help agencies comply with the requirement that state SNAP-Ed Plans must include multi-level interventions or public health approaches that reach low-income households most impacted by health disparities.

Identification of interventions appropriate for SNAP-Ed Plans has involved the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research, the Association of SNAP-Ed Nutrition Networks and Other Implementing Agencies, and the Center for Training and Research Translation. The interventions included span the continuum of scientific evidence from research-tested interventions to practice-tested interventions to emerging interventions. A peer-review process was used to examine the evidence and assess evaluation findings, reach, and the potential for scaling up the interventions.”

DFPM-RED Program Manager Highlighted for HIV Work

UAMS College of Medicine Department of Family and Preventative Medicine Community Research Group program manager LaTunja Sockwell was recently featured The Little Rock Daily Record. The article entitled “Slaying the Dragon” highlights Sockwell’s work in HIV prevention and education and focuses on her motivations for championing this work at DFPM-RED.

“I share my story because when people can put a face with something, it always changes their attitudes and their beliefs about what they thought they knew.

“Sharing my own personal story helps people see the real person, not just what they thought HIV was about.”

Read the full article here.

DFPM and COM Awarded $4.66 Million Grant from HRSA

HRSA, the Health Resources and Services Administration agency in the US Department of Health and Human Services, has awarded a $4.66 million grant designed to increase the number of primary care physicians in underserved communities in Arkansas.

The director of the project is Christopher T. Westfall, M.D., FACS (UAMS Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the College of Medicine). Co-directors are Daniel A. Knight M.D., FAAFP (Chair, UAMS Department of Family and Preventive Medicine) and Marcia Byers, Ph.D., RN (Director of Clinical Innovation and Research for Regional Programs). The evaluator of the project is Diane Jarrett, Ed.D. (DFPM Director of Education and Communications).

Specific objectives of the grant project include enhancing recruitment and retention to increase the number of medical students from Arkansas’ rural and medically underserved communities; expanding medical student clinical opportunities throughout the state; and in general attracting more students to practice in rural and medically underserved communities.

Partners in the program include the UAMS College of Medicine, UAMS Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UAMS Regional Programs, Community Health Centers of Arkansas, the Arkansas Rural Health Partnership – Critical Access Hospitals and Rural Health Clinics, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and Philander Smith College, among others.

Project HEAL Awarded $2.5 Million Grant from SAMHSA

A team with DFPM-RED, others at UAMS, and Better Community Development. (BCD) (sub-recipient) will lead Project HEAL to expand and enhance treatment and recovery support services among African American (AA) adult men and women who reside in the Pulaski County area and are involved in the criminal justice system, have a substance use disorder (SUD) particularly alcohol, marijuana, and/or opioid abuse, or co-occurring SUD/mental illness (COD), and are at high risk for HIV/Viral Hepatitis (VH) infection or transmission. The group plans to serve 1,200 individuals over the five-year project (240 individuals annually). A large proportion of persons served are expected to have some type of criminal justice involvement and underrepresented minorities. BCD, a three-decades-old program serves as a catalyst to constructively meet central AR’s urgent needs in SUD/COD treatment and HIV prevention, filling a service gap by establishing services beyond SUD/COD treatment to include a Community Health Worker (CHW) and HIV education/testing/stigma reduction for all enrollees of their program. The CHW will assist project enrollees with client-centered emotional, tangible, informational, and appraisal supports focused on recovery. The BCD team will refer clients to licensed treatment partners as needed for direct COD treatment services, including MAT, HIV, and Hepatitis services. Evidence-based interventions (in addition to MAT and CHW) will include Motivational Interviewing, Healthy Love, and Seeking Safety provided by BCD staff. Project HEAL will provide outreach and engagement services and assist enrollees with development of an individualized Recovery Plan. Project HEAL participants will have access to a full continuum of acceptable, effective, and individualized SUD/COD treatment including MAT and recovery support services including substance abuse peer counseling and support groups, housing for homeless and low income individuals and families, violence prevention, prevention of incarceration and community re-entry, and HIV prevention and service coordination. Lessons learned will be shared with providers and policy-makers.

Project HEAL is lead by DFPM-REDs Latunja Sockwell in partnership with Better Community Development.

The $2.5 million grant is funded by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)