FHOP to Visit Counties! Between February and June, FHOP will be doing 4-6 technical assistance visits to counties. If you would like FHOP to come to your county, please contact us by telephone (415) 476-5283 or by email fhop@fcm.ucsf.edu. Please include your name, your county, and type of technical assistance you need. If we cannot accomodate you this fiscal year, we will try to visit your county next year.

NEW FHOP Staff
Please help us welcome three new FHOP staff. Linda Mack Burch, a Health Educator, coordinates a project evaluating a San Francisco program to reduce African American infant mortality. She also particpates in some FHOP trainings. Nadia Thind has a Masters in Public Health in Health Education and joined FHOP as a Research Assistant. She currently focuses on developing the components of our training program and assists in technical assistance for California counties. Megan Gaffigan came on board as our new Administrative Analyst. She handles all of our contracts, grants, and budgets. Sadly, as most of you know, Roy McCandless left FHOP in November. His presence will definitely be missed. Until we find a replacement for Roy, Nadia Thind, Lisa Lindvall, and Gerry Oliva will be handling technical assitance calls

The California Center for Public Health Advocacy raises awareness about public health issues and promotes the establishment of effective health policies. The Center has recently called upon policy makers to take a look at overweight and unfit children by displaying data analyzed from the California Department of Education's 2001 California Physical Fitness Test. The data is organized by California Assembly District and allows counties to see rates, maps, and fact sheets for this serious issue.

Trainings

Community Assessment 1: Basic Concepts
FHOP's February training, "Community Assessment 1: Basic Concepts" is a one-day training designed for new MCH staff to introduce them to community needs assessment. Content will include an overview of the concepts and components of community assessment; coalition building; developing a community profile; assessing population needs, current system's capacity, and community assets; selecting health indicators; and reviewing basic data concepts.

This training has already taken place. Please refer to the Training Schedule for future dates.

FHOP is hard at work to improve our website. The new changes will allow you to look for Maternal and Child Health data by category and will include an index for FHOP recommended data links. Each link will direct you to detailed information for the website and finally to the website itself. We hope to have the Data Portal completed by April 2003.