Product Releases & Updates
EpiBC 2005 est arrivé!

Useful County Data Resources
MCH Library Services Available - The National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health at Georgetown University has been awarded a cooperative agreement from the US HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau to continue providing its Maternal and Child Health Library services.  The MCH library combines research and reference capacity with information technology to provide broad access to information about advances in MCH science and practice for health professionals, policymakers, program administrators, families, and educators.  The MCH library will expand its hard-copy collection of documents and enhance its electronic resources, both of which can be used to inform new program initiatives and reach families and other key stakeholders with information about topics ranging from adolescent mental health and asthma to substance use and violence prevention.  Additionally, the Library contains annotated resource guides on MCH topics, and searchable databases for electronic records.  This resource can be accessed at www.mchlibrary.info.

Trainings
The EpiBC 2005 training in April was a success!!  Counties from near and far attended the training to learn more about the changes in the release of the latest version of EpiBC and to hear about important changes to AVSS.  This training was such a success and people expressed much interest in EpiBC, that we are hosting another EpiBC 2005 training in San Francisco.

Upcoming EpiBC 2005 Training is scheduled!!  This will be a one-day training designed for MCAH staff to learn and practice EpiBC 2005.  EpiBC 2005 is a Windows-based software program for analyzing California birth certificate data based on EpiInfo, a public domain analytical software package from the Centers for Disease Control.  Each participant will have a computer on which to practice and carry out a structured exercise.  Features in EpiBC 2005 include many new standard reports, excellent chart and graph functions, mapping capabilities, incorporation of Microsoft Access database standards, and use of HTML for report outputs.  EpiBC 2005 also incorporates the new data elements from the updated Birth Certificate.  Registration form for this training is available!

Spotlight
FHOP brought in a guest speaker with expert knowledge on asthma and intervention planning pertaining to asthma, to a workshop held in October 2004 in Modesto. Course materials for the workshop can be found at FHOP Trainings.  In addition, FHOP identified several resources on asthma.  Recently, FHOP added a link to the CDC's "Potentially Effective Interventions for Asthma" to the Asthma section of its website.  The CDC site provides information on different programs working on asthma interventions, and supplies program and article information, as well as outcome measures and results.  Other intervention planning resources posted on the FHOP site include problem analysis diagrams, links to websites, literature references, and contact information for our guest speakers from all trainings.