UCLA/Johnson & Johnson

HEALTH CARE INSTITUTE

The UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Health Care Project Initiative has touched 10,000 low income families in 55 Head Start programs, nationwide.  Its five objectives are to:

q       Provide training and information for the implementation of a successful health care literacy program

q       Enable parents to become better caregivers by improving health care knowledge and skills

q       Empower parents in decision making

q       Enhance parents’ self esteem and confidence; and

q       Contribute to reducing escalating health care costs

The Health Care Institute is designed to help alleviate the problem of inappropriate use of emergency care systems.  Parents are familiarized with and taught how to use the book, “What to Do When Your Child Is Sick.”  Written at a third grade reading level with lots of pictures for easy use, the book is sectioned into common causes of distress for children.  The overall purpose of the Institute is not to train parents in first aid methods but to train them to use the book FIRST, prior to clinic, doctor or emergency room visits. 

The Kansas Head Start Association has committed to implement the Health Care Institute statewide, and Child Start’s Early Head Start and Head Start Programs are in the second wave of implementation for 2006.  Serving Sedgwick County, our Early Head Start program reaches 195 families, and the Head Start Program reaches 811 families each year.  The families are low income, many receive some sort of public assistance, and many use local hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of health care.  This, no doubt, overloads our health care system and causes Kansas health care costs – whether state-funded Medicaid or hospital-funded indigent care – to rise.

Following the model pioneered by UCLA / Johnson & Johnson, Child Start’s Head Start and Early Head Start Programs will host three large interactive training events for parents of enrolled children ages 0-5 years.  Large events are recommended because it has been proven that people respond better to larger events that are seen as being “special,” rather than smaller, more intimate settings. 

To help assure good attendance, the training model includes:

• A meal served at each training event
• Transportation and child care provided for the training events
• Each family receiving a home First Aid kit, which they will “build” during the course of the training with first aid materials provided
• Door prizes and raffle gifts that are health-related or useful in the families’ homes offered as incentives during the training day

Early Head Start will train its families on Saturday, October 23, 2006, and preschool Head Start, because of its size, will host two trainings on October 22 and October 29.  Training will be presented in English and Spanish, with Spanish-language trainers in separate groups.  The groups will be combined for the meal and drawings for the larger door prizes.

In addition to the training, parents will receive three home visits, one month apart, to see if / how they are using the book rather than the medical system.  Collected data (including pre- and post-test results as well as home visit reports) will measure the outcomes and success of the program.  The Wichita information will become part of a larger UCLA data base that tracks the overall success of the project.  The information will be made public at the end of the project, hopefully sparking community interest and support for future projects. 

Our Head Start and Early Head Start programs are committed to ongoing participation in this project and anticipate pursuing funding for both the basic participation cost ($60 per family for books and UCLA data collection) and training incentives in future years.