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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2001: article | |
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Fostering collaboration and progress in rural women’s health By Celena E. Kusch | |||||||||||
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Fifteen Penn State faculty met with federal health advocates and policy makers this winter in an effort to enhance collaborations and open new avenues for funding in the area of rural women’s health. The meeting comes on the heels of the national Bridging Rural Women’s Health into the New Millennium conference held in Washington, D.C., last August. The conference, sponsored by the Penn State Rural Women’s Health Initiative, brought together national and state organizations that deal with the health issues of women in rural areas. The goal was to focus national attention on program needs and public policy issues in order to develop future projects to promote the health of rural women. Program partners included Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development, the College of Medicine at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the College of Agricultural Sciences, Penn State Cooperative Extension, Outreach and Cooperative Extension, the Geisinger Health System, the Penn State Women’s Health Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service’s Office on Women’s Health. Many of these partners continued their collaboration through the Washington, D.C., meetings this winter. Dr. Fred Vondracek, associate dean for undergraduate studies and Outreach and Cooperative Extension in the College of Health and Human Development, conceived the idea of the Washington, D.C., initiative and proposed that the timing was right to organize faculty interested in rural women’s health to go to Washington, D.C., to discuss with federal agencies projects and funding opportunities. Representatives from the federal agencies who set national priorities for these issues agreed. The initiative was organized through Vondracek’s office under the coordination of Susan LeWay, program development specialist for the college. Vondracek explained the aim of the meetings, saying, “The Washington initiative continues our ongoing efforts to place Penn State in the forefront of universities in the area of rural health. Our goal was to bring together faculty from various administrative units, different colleges and different departments to talk about developing collaborations, sharing interests and creating synergies in going forward with work in this field. We were interested in putting faculty in touch with program officers and leaders in the major federal funding agencies with interest in research and outreach related to rural women’s health. I think we accomplished most of those goals.” In terms of fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations, faculty reported the event was a success. The faculty who participated in the trip represented seven departments, schools and divisions from within the College of Health and Human Development, the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Medicine, as well as Penn State Cooperative Extension, Continuing Education and the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health. Over the course of the two-day trip, these faculty attended 14 meetings with groups ranging from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy in the Health Resources and Services Administration to the USDA Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health. According to Vondracek, it is unusual for interdisciplinary groups of faculty to conduct grant-seeking meetings together. “More frequently, contact with agencies is initiated by individuals,” he said. “This excursion was a departure from the common practice in the University, and it allowed us to take a larger perspective.” Roberto Anson, coordinator of the State Offices of Rural Health program of the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, commended Penn State for planning the interdisciplinary initiative. “As a federal office, we are responsible for administering funding and advocacy on rural health issues,” he said. “We always encourage partnerships, but it is a long-term process of planting seeds and following up with people interested in these issues. Penn State demonstrated real forethought to pull together such a broad interdisciplinary group. It will be interesting to see what happens next in developing collaborative projects and proposals.” Faculty participants also stressed the importance of cross-college collaboration. Lisa Davis, director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health, attended and helped to organize the trip. “I think it was essential to be interdisciplinary,” she said. “We all had pieces we could contribute to the issue. When groups get together to find a common ground, it makes for a much more multifaceted dialogue. We are all encouraged to collaborate and to cross boundaries, but it is hard to get out of your group unless there is some force that brings you together. It is amazing what can happen when you face someone across a table and start talking.” The Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health is a statewide advocacy organization housed on Penn State’s University Park campus, within the Department of Health Policy and Administration in the College of Health and Human Development and Penn State Cooperative Extension. The office is funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Because of the federal funding connection, the office provided support in coordinating meetings with some of the Washington, D.C., agencies. “It was good to be able to facilitate the arrangements of some meetings there,” Davis commented. “I think it helped to raise our visibility with our federal partners, so they don’t see us just as another state office, but as part of a bigger effort that is going on at Penn State around the issue of rural health.” Fellow participant Dr. Mona Counts, associate professor of nursing and Eloise Ross Eberly Professor in the School of Nursing, added, “The cross-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary resources that Penn State has available to improve access to women’s health care, especially in rural areas, have been tremendously enhanced by this trip.” Counts provides graduate instruction to Penn State students throughout the state enrolled in the Family Nurse Practitioner Program through videoconferencing from the campus at Penn State Fayette. She is also president of Greene Health Associates, a professional corporation of nurse practitioners that supplies health services in Greene County to people with few or no health care options. Like many others in the group, she met many of her colleagues in rural health for the first time during the Washington, D.C., trip. Among them was Dr. Tasha Snyder, assistant professor of rural sociology. As a result of the Washington, D.C., initiative, Snyder and Counts are working on a collaboration to conduct outreach with the Greene County nursing clinic. The proposed partnership would be part of a Children, Youth and Families Consortium project to develop a Penn State Cooperative Extension-based teen parenting program about health issues. Snyder developed this project with Dr. Katherine Cason, associate professor of food science. They are optimistic that the cooperation between experts in food science, rural sociology and nursing will expand the access to and impact of the program as it develops. Snyder already has a few other projects coming out of the trip, including two proposals to Dr. Carmen Moten, director of the Division of Services and Intervention Research in the Office of Mental Health Research of the National Institute of Mental Health, and a potential research plan inspired by representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study how teen parents combine food program funding. Snyder emphasized the many important opportunities for collaboration the trip opened for her as a new faculty member, but even long-standing faculty remarked that they had seen similar benefits. Davis said, “The trip was an opportunity to meet other faculty, especially in the College of Agricultural Sciences. I have done a follow-up with Dr. Matthew Kaplan, associate professor of intergenerational programs and aging in the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, twice since the trip. It has been a great benefit to make the new connections, to strengthen our partnerships and to talk about future collaborations. “It has also increased our potential for funding,” she said. “Late last year, the University of Pennsylvania approached our office about developing a rural mental health program, and I discussed that project with the National Institute of Mental Health during the trip. Since then, I have been able to meet with department heads here to develop potential collaboration on a project.” Both Davis and Snyder also noted that the Washington, D.C., initiative has increased their involvement with the Rural Women’s Health Initiative. Stephanie Tyworth, program developer for the Outreach Office of Program Development, attended the Washington, D.C., trip in order to develop ideas for a future national conference that is now in the planning and proposal stages. As a result of the trip, Snyder now serves on the committee planning that event, as well. “My growing connection with the Rural Women’s Health Initiative has great implications for my research and my extension work, too,” Snyder said. Vondracek reported he was pleased with the impact the trip has had on faculty outreach activities. Just months after the event, the Washington, D.C., initiative has already begun to foster future conferences, Penn State Cooperative Extension programs and outreach-based research. “We view outreach as a sensible part of virtually all efforts related to health,” Vondracek noted. “While we did not require faculty in the Washington initiative to be involved with outreach, we did ask them to consider the outreach implications of their interests. This trip was a great opportunity to get faculty interested in and educated about outreach in the University,” he said. “Many of the faculty who participated have job descriptions with a significant outreach component already,” he added, “and their discussions of collaborations with other faculty also promote engagement and enhance existing outreach offerings in the colleges.” This community focus was also attractive to representatives from the federal agencies. “The extensive community-based linkages Penn State has are very important in adding a practical dimension to this work,” Anson noted. “It is great to see Penn State’s attention to rural women’s health issues. It will be interesting to see how well Penn State will do in tapping the important resources of the women in rural communities in order to identify community needs and improve rural health. Penn State has a great land-grant tradition of working with communities.” According to Vondracek, the Washington, D.C., initiative may soon become a model for faculty involved with a variety of interdisciplinary issues. “The success of this trip encouraged us to think about making this an annual Penn State affair and to invite continued participation and leadership from all of the units involved, including the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health, the College of Agricultural Sciences, Cooperative Extension and the College of Medicine, in addition to the College of Health and Human Development,” he said. “We would like to continue these trips in a topical area of common interest to all units each year.” | ||||||||||
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