Rpe Directors Steering Committee Call

RPE DIRECTORS STEERING COMMITTEE CALL January 16, 2007

Present: Carol Hensell (AZ) Marci Diamond (MA) Binnie LeHew (IA) Debbie Ruggles (WA) Becky Odor (VA) Jan Davis (FL) Kathy Middleton (OK) Peg Prusa-Ogea (NE)

Absent: Teresa Brechlin (UT) Amy Okaya (MN) Jane Key (SC) Carol Thornton (PA) Rebecca Koshiba (PALAU) (not able to access the bridge line from the territories)

Binnie opened the meeting at 3:04 p.m. E.T.

Reminders  2006 Annual Report & FSRs due January 31 st . For the annual report – don’t sweat about the additional detail they requested for the education sessions – best guess is fine  FY06 (Year 5) carryover requests due February 23, 2007. Kathy asked if that also applied to Cycle II and if we can get a targeted date for approval. Binnie thought it would probably come with the 2nd half award, but would ask. All states would like to know when they can expect to let their contractors plan for spending the additional money (and have more time than they did last year). Binnie will follow up with PGO.  Please participate in the “Activities Model” calls (one on January 19 and one on January 24th). CDC wants our feedback and input.

CDC Updates Binnie and Becky were on a call last week with Margaret Brome and Jocelyn Wheaton from CDC and Annette Burrhus-Clay and Monika Hostler-Johnson from the Alliance. These were updates from CDC:  There has been a new project officer added. Kaili McCray (formerly from Idaho Dept of Health) joined them this month. As a result, there will be some reassignment of project officers. Also - Jocelyn Wheaton will now be the Council liaison in place of Sandra Cashman.  There will be a final “close out report” for the last 5-year project period sent within a week or so. States will have around a month to complete it. It should be fairly simple – mostly narrative – and will only need to be submitted as a word document, not in RPEGS.  Dates for annual meeting have been set. It will be June 11-13th in Atlanta. The meeting will be held at the Clifton Rd. Headquarters in Atlanta. They are still confirming hotel locations. They would like volunteers from both Council and Alliance to serve on planning committee – we are asking for 2-3 folks who are members of the Council.  The “Practice Guidelines” are still in progress. (Marci clarified that these were the ones that involved the expert panels several years ago – and covered such topics as professional and community education, community organizing and mobilization, policy, etc.) CDC has set them as a priority but finishing them has been delayed. No target date for completion. Jan asked if we had any word yet on the due date for the continuation application. She needs at least six weeks after she is done with her draft to get it through her own departmental review/approval process. Others said the same thing. Binnie asked Margaret on the call last week, but they did not have any idea. The “template” is just now being drafted.

Other RPE grant updates New Annual report – Marci updated her work on the annual report draft. She has not seen a final version yet. CDC received a lot of feedback from the people who “field tested” it. The CDC is trying to capture the different types of work that states will be doing and want to establish a baseline of activity. She encouraged them to pull back a little and just try to capture the “process” of where states are in their assessment, planning, implementation, etc. She also told them that they may not be able to receive much of their “baseline” information because no one had the data elements prior to the beginning of the grant year. It may actually be year 2 before much baseline can be gathered across states. She gave an example of some of the specific information they were trying to capture.

Binnie noted that she was involved in the process of identifying states to field test the report, and those states were California, Colorado, D.C., Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Two state coalitions – Delaware and Wisconsin – were also involved. These represented a mix of urban/rural states, new/experienced RPE Directors, etc.

CDC’s Training and Technical Assistance Binnie reported that CDC is working on its training and technical assistance plan for the RPE grant. A first draft of the RPE Assessment is done. They are trying to take into account the differences “developmentally” between states and tailor the TA to those different levels. It may be six months before they have their plan developed. Binnie suggested they consider a variety of ways to get information out to states – included teleconferences and web conferences during the year.

Regional Reports Region I & II (Marci) – They had their second call last week, are holding quarterly calls. They mostly just check in with each other and Marci shares the minutes from our Steering Committee meetings, along with other info we receive. She has shared some of her work on the new annual report and assessment with them. They were very appreciative of the letter the RPE Council sent to Dr. Gerberding and found it validating of their concerns. Region IV (Jan) – Things have been quiet and they have not had anything going on recently. They seem to be very busy with other projects. Florida is doing their first year workplan – and will be pulling together a state plan in February. Region V (Amy) – Binnie read notes from their recent call. They expressed concern about some states proceeding with their assessments and planning while CDC is still defining its approach. They hope that the outcomes/requirements will not conflict with what they have already started. They wanted to know if RPE Directors could be involved in the feedback regarding any new data indicators that CDC will include in the new annual report (Binnie followed up to tell them what was being done). One last thing – they note that the new RPE model emphasizes norms change. They all agree this is important, but question whether RPE (or any categorical funding) has the capacity in terms of people and funding to make this happen. Region VI (Kathy) – They will be setting up their first call to see how people like it. They will decide how to go from there. Region VII (Peg) – Has held one call and has another one scheduled. Mostly just sharing what other states are doing. The two newer folks appreciate hearing/sharing what is going on. Region IX (Carol H.) – They have been communicating by email – and will set up one call just to see if they like doing it. There is nothing else going on – she is waiting to hear from Nevada about their new project. Region X (Debbie) – They have not had regional calls, but she checks in by email. Many of them have other grants they are working on, so everyone is really busy (everyone echoed this sentiment).

Other Business Kathy reported on the outcome of her conversations with the NSVRC. She talked with Sally Laskey about these three things: 1) Can they post states RPE applications, so we can access them as a teaching aid, etc. 2) Can they help us identify a list of evidence-based sexual violence prevention curricula, and 3) can they help prepare data fact sheets with citations that states can use for things like social norms work. This is what she found out: 1. They would be very interested in making the grants available - either universally to all or by request only. She needs to know how many are willing to share their grants. We will poll our state partners and ask if they are interested in accessing the information and if they are willing to make their own application available. We also need to know if they want access to the annual report, as well. 2. Kathy has found that SAMSHA has done the most extensive review of programming to determine “model” programs – and they have their own definitions for what is considered “model”, “promising”, etc. The Blueprints program in Colorado is considered to have an excellent process for reviewing and approving curricula. The only evidence-based sexual-violence-specific curricula that Kathy has run across is Safe Dates. There are other programs that address components of respect and are at different age-appropriate levels, but they are more universal than sexual violence specific. She thinks it would be nice if NSVRC would include links to both the SAMHSA model programs website and the Blueprints information. Binnie offered to check with the Resource Sharing Project staff in Iowa to see if they had more to offer. Debbie will do the same with Washington staff. In order to get more done in this area, we would have to be willing to help NSVRC staff – they are understaffed right now. 3. As far as data fact sheets, we had a brief discussion about sources of data and also good citations for research in the area. The SafetyLit service (www.safetylit.org) is a good one for current articles/publications dealing with violence against women. There is a new book out, published by Springer Publications called Handbook of Injury and Violence Prevention (info about the book is at http://www.springer.com/west/home/public+health? SGWID=4-40467-22-97856852-detailsPage=ppmmedia%7CaboutThisBook. Marci reminded everyone that VAWNet and NSVRC are always looking for materials/resources that are out there, so please share these things when we find out about them. VAWNet, in particular, has staff who can do these kinds of searches.

We were running overtime, so Binnie ended the meeting at 4:11 p.m. ET.

Next meeting date: Tuesday, February 20th, 3-4:00 p.m. EST (we will revisit next time if we want monthly or bimonthly meetings – may want to cut back since we have so much going on.)

Reminder: to set up a conference call for your region, contact Angela Tomlinson at [email protected]. Tell her the date(s) and time for the call – specifying the time zone or giving it to her in Eastern Time zone equivalent. She will then set it up and email you the information to distribute to your regional partners. (These calls are free to you - and are offered as a service by the CDC.)

Meeting notes taken by Binnie LeHew (IA).