News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: October 13, 2008
For more information, contact Virginia Elliott, Vice President for Programs, 620-662-8586
United Methodist Health Ministry Fund announces over $644,000 in new health grants
Hutchinson, KS—The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund today is pleased to announce the award of new grants to increase access to health care, improve oral health, and promote healthy lifestyles through better nutrition and exercise in Kansas. Thirteen of the new grants were awarded through the 2008 Innovation Funding program, designed specifically to support practical and promising fresh ideas for improving health within the Fund’s strategic funding fields.
First United Methodist Church of Pratt decided to take a holistic approach to health with its Build a Better World program and will receive $15,000 to implement the idea. Community fitness teams are being formed and challenged to make healthy eating and exercise choices for themselves while raising money to help low-income school children get the health care they need. Project organizers expect to have at least 20 teams participating in the new program and to raise at least $20,000 for a children’s health fund. The health fund will be made available to local schools for specific needs. Part of the grant—$5,000—is a matching grant for the children’s health fund that will match the first $5,000 raised by community fitness teams on a dollar for dollar basis.
The Agenda United Methodist Church, Agenda, has been awarded a $4,675 Healthy Congregations grant to help establish a health ministry program serving the congregation and community. Grant funding will be used to purchase a computer, training materials, and other health ministry resources. The grant project director is Lynne Huncovsky and the pastor of Agenda UMC is Rev. Norma Thompson.
A grant of $68,613 has been awarded to improve access to mental health services in frontier and rural western Kansas. The planning project—aimed at children’s services—will be coordinated by the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. The project aims to engage the voices of western Kansas residents and service providers in a planning process that is sensitive to the resources and challenges of rural regions. The Area Mental Health Center, Garden City; Center for Counseling and Consultation, Great Bend; St. Francis Community Services, Salina; and Larned State Hospital, Larned are partners in this collaborative planning project. The University of Kansas is an international public research and teaching institution that operates through a diverse, multicampus system including Lawrence, Kansas City, Overland Park, Wichita, and Topeka.
A grant of $49,800 is awarded to the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Nursing to implement an obesity treatment program in partnership with Greeley County Health Services in Sharon Springs. Stay Alive with Five A’s will be used to improve weight loss among rural women enrolled in an existing weight loss clinic. Developed by School of Nursing faculty Jane Peterson, RN, Ph.D., Stay Alive with Five A’s has already proven effective in urban clinic settings.
With a $49,950 grant, the Saline County Commission on Aging, Salina, will develop a service designed to help elderly residents stay in their homes rather than moving to a long-term care facility. Live at Home Solutions is being planned to provide a simple, easy, and cost-effective way for chronically ill older adults and their families to find and use home and community services. It is hoped that the business model that develops from the project would be replicable in other Kansas communities.
Heartland Programs Head Start and Early Head Start in Salina supports breastfeeding as a sound nutritional decision for the health of babies and mothers. With a $3,500 grant from the Health Fund, the program will be able to provide breast pumps, if needed, for young mothers returning to school or work. Having breast pumps available at school or available for check-out for mothers returning to work will help overcome one of the biggest barriers to low-income mothers continuing to breastfeed, according to Head Start Health Specialist Thea Todd. The program provides services to approximately 35 to 40 pregnant women a year.
The Smoky Hill Family Medicine Residency Program in Salina plans to update the way it provides services to patients with the help of a $49,500 grant to redesign its clinical practice. Resident physicians help staff the Salina Family HealthCare Center, a federally-qualified health center that provides services on a sliding fee scale based on a patient’s income. TransforMED, a subsidiary of the American Academy of Family Physicians that focuses on medical practice redesign, has been selected to guide the change process over the next three years with partial funding from the Health Fund grant. The project is being led by the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, which sponsors Smoky Hill among three family medicine residency programs. Smoky Hill’s three-year program enrolls four resident physicians per year and many go on to practice in rural and underserved areas of Kansas. The clinic practice redesign is expected to improve the quality of care, productivity, and efficiency as well as prepare physicians for the future of family medicine.
Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Manhattan, will adapt its oral health training program for child care professionals to an on-line distance learning course with funding from a $23,736 grant. Filling the Gap: Oral Health & Kansas Children was created several years ago with an earlier Health Fund grant. Offering the course on-line is designed to make continuing education in oral health for young children more available statewide, particularly to rural child care providers. The course will be offered eight times a year and is expected to attract ten to twenty participants for each distance learning class.
Oral Health Kansas, a Topeka-based coalition, will pilot the integration of oral health in Area Agency on Aging services for the frail elderly with the help of a $50,000 grant. Central Plains Area Agency on Aging, Wichita, has agreed to pilot the project. Central Plains serves approximately 83,000 clients living in the counties of Sedgwick, Butler, and Harvey. The program will seek to connect frail elders with needed dental care and provide education for Central Plains staff, caregivers, and dental professionals on the special oral health needs of the elderly. Preventive hygiene services will also be coordinated through the project. The project is expected to result in a workbook to assist other Kansas Area Agencies on Aging in replicating the oral health program.
A $50,000 grant has been approved for development of a plan for health care coverage for the uninsured in Sedgwick County. The process of identifying feasible health care coverage models and assessing community interest and resources will be coordinated as part of an ongoing collaborative through Central Plains Regional Health Care Foundation. It is expected that the program developed through this project could potentially provide health care coverage to 25,000 uninsured people and benefit up to 100,000 family members.
Rainbows United, an organization committed to enhancing the lives of children with varied abilities and needs in Sedgwick and Butler counties, will use a grant of $49,250 to purchase interactive telecommunications equipment. The addition of this technology will allow off-site diagnosis, consultation, training, and mentoring services for children, families, and professionals throughout central and western Kansas. Specific services provided will include those relating to developmental pediatrics, early intervention for developmental disabilities, and cochlear implant mapping. The equipment will be placed in an early childhood development center designed into Rainbows’ new facility in northeast Wichita.
Catholic Charities’ St. Anthony Family Shelter in Wichita will add a new emphasis on health to its services for homeless families with the help of a $19,448 grant. With the grant, a part-time nurse will be added to the staff. The nurse will provide health screenings, coordinate referrals to health care providers, assist with enrollment in benefit programs, and provide assistance with management of chronic health conditions. In addition, St. Anthony will provide a weekly health program to encourage health literacy and self-care.
Senior Services, Inc. of Wichita is the sponsor of a pilot project entitled Wii Get Healthy Together which will be offered to older adults. Fourteen sites in Sedgwick, Butler, and Harvey counties will host the project, which will evaluate the physical and social changes of older adults over time as they interact with the Nintendo Wii system. The project will begin in January 2009 and is made possible with a $50,000 grant from the Health Fund. For more information, contact Senior Services, Inc. of Wichita at 316-267-0302.
The University of Kansas Energy Balance Laboratory, Lawrence, is awarded $77,200 to offer training and support for Kansas health and social service providers interested in developing evidence-based programs to treat and prevent obesity. The effort will be led by the director of the Energy Balance Lab, Joseph Donelly, Ph.D. Twenty participants will be selected for the training. At least 400 Kansans are expected to benefit from programs developed through the project during the first year.
The Kansas Health Consumer Coalition, Topeka, receives $10,000 to support staffing in the coming year for the Kansans for Better Health Coalition. Kansans for Better Health, organized earlier this year, is a 68-member coalition dedicated to healthcare reform.
Kansas Head Start Association, Lawrence, has been awarded $73,843 to improve health literacy for 2600 Kansas parents. The Head Start Association has developed a training program to help health care providers and others teach low-income parents about child health and when to seek a doctor’s care. Ten safety-net clinics and 24 parish nurses throughout Kansas have committed to offering the program and will receive training through the grant. In addition, the grant will provide a book, What to Do When Your Child Gets Sick, for parents. Parents will learn how to use the book as part of the program.
Based in Hutchinson, the mission of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund is “Healthy Kansans through cooperative and strategic philanthropy guided by Christian principles.” Its funding comes from an endowment established in 1986 by the Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church from a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Wesley Hospital in Wichita. Since the Health Fund’s founding, grants totaling nearly $50 million have supported hundreds of health-related projects in Kansas.
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