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>>Rural Nurse Workforce
>>Health Record Effort Moves Ahead
>>Rural Hospitals Challenged

VRHA Executive Director Beth O'Connor is a panelist on Health (in)Equity - a Virginia PBS series showing a local response to Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?. Unnatural Causes is a four-hour PBS series that sounds the alarm about the nation's huge and alarming socio-economic and racial/ethnic inequities in health and our poor health as a society, in general—and searches for their causes.

O'Connor joined Michael O. Royster, MD, MPH Director of the Office of Minority Health and Public Health Policy; Reverend Cessar L. Scott, Executive Minister, Baptist General Convention of Virginia; and Lilian Peake, MD, MPH, Health District Director of the Thomas Jefferson District.

Health (in)Equity will be aired on April 3rd at 11pm, immediately following the 2nd Segment of Unnatural Causes showing at 10pm.

Virginia Included in Kaiser Report

The Virginia Department of Health, in cooperation with The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, has created a quarterly newsletter that will discuss zoonotic diseases and their impact on wildlife, domestic animals and public health in Virginia.

A zoonosis is an infectious disease that is transmitted from vertebrate animals to humans.  The infection may or may not cause illness in the animal.  The infection can be transmitted to humans from infected animals either directly (through contact or eating), or indirectly (through invertebrate vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks). There are numerous zoonotic diseases, many of which can also be transmitted from person-to-person or through food or water. 

This new newsletter will be distributed electronically and will be posted on the VDH webpage at: http://www.vdh.state.va.us/epidemiology/dee/otherzoonosis/               

The University of Washington Rural Health Research Center has released a study titled: Long-Term Trends in Characteristics of the Rural Nurse Workforce. This national study characterizes changes in the demographic, education and practice characteristics of registered nurses (RNs) in rural and urban areas from 1980 to 2004, using data from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN).

Findings include that rural RNs continue to have less nursing education on average than urban RNs, their average age has increased, and a growing proportion commute to larger rural towns and urban areas for their work, suggesting that rural health care administrators will continue to face challenges in maintaining adequate RN resources for their facilities.

Click here for the project summary or here for the full report.

A consortium of eight large employers, including Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Intel Corp. and Cardinal Health, is moving forward with plans to provide their combined 5 million employees with personal health records by early 2009. Portland, OR-based Dossia, a not-for-profit employer consortium, is testing aspects of the infrastructure, linking data from insurers, pharmacies and other sources to a central repository, according to consortium president Colin Evans.

By fall or early next year, Dossia believes employers will begin phasing in PHRs to all employees, dependents and retirees of sponsoring companies, Evans said. Other consortium members are Applied Materials, BP America, Pitney Bowes, AT&T Inc., and sanofi-aventis. Each is providing $1.5 million in startup funds and later will pay annual transaction fees for each employee.

For details, visit http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/... and http://www.dossia.org/home

By Nicole Gerring - Times Heraldn (Port Huron, MI)

Beatrice Roth, 83, of Minden City, was admitted to Deckerville Community Hospital on Monday with her third case of pneumonia this winter. She said the hospital's location is convenient and the atmosphere is warm and personal.

Most St. Clair County residents are within a moderate driving distance of large hospitals such as Port Huron and Mercy. But for Sanilac County residents, the nearest large hospital may be a considerable distance away. It's the small, community hospitals, such as the one in Deckerville or McKenzie Memorial Hospital in Sandusky, that provide an access point for health care.

Read the full article.

Mark your calendar

For more information about these and other events, visit http://www.vrha.org/events.html

April 3-4: 2nd Annual Palliative Care Conference - Wythville
April 27-29: 12th Annual Virginia Faith Community Health Ministry Retreat - Toano
May 7-10: NHRA's Annual Conference - New Orleans, LA
June 5-6: Medication Access, Use and Safety in Rural America - Minneapolis
June 25: Retention in Times of Exponential Change - Web conference
August 4-5: Cervical Cancer Conference - Durham, NC
September 15-16: Virgina's 2008 Rural Summit - Lynchburg

Job Announcements

For information about other positions, visit http://www.vrha.org/index/jobs.html

The Free Clinic of the New River Valley seeks part-time (up to 20-hour/wk) licensed dentist to provide oral health care to uninsured, low-income adults.  Competitive pay and flexible work hours. 4-chair facility and support staff. 

Send cover letter and resume to: Dentist Search, Free Clinic of the New River Valley, 215 Roanoke Street, Christiansburg, VA  24073; www.nrvfreeclinic.org

Funding Opportunities

Brookdale Foundation National Group Respite Program
  

Program web site http://www.brookdalefoundation.org/respiteprogram.htm
 
Sponsor Brookdale Foundation

Deadline July 2, 2008 

Purpose Since 1989, the Brookdale National Group Respite Program has awarded seed grants to organizations to develop and implement social model group respite programs. These day programs have served thousands of elders with Alzheimer's disease or related dementia, and their family caregivers. The goals of the program are:

• To offer opportunities for persons with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia to engage in a program of meaningful social and recreational activities in a secure and supportive setting in order to maximize their cognitive and social abilities; and
• To provide relief and support to family members and other primary caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia.

In addition to providing respite care and enjoyable group activities, the programs offer family caregivers access to services such as counseling, support groups, information and referral, and training and education. With a nationwide network of programs providing regular respite services, and additional programs opening each year, the Program demonstrates that a cost-effective, social model of adult day services can successfully address the special needs of Alzheimer's families.

Eligibility Funds may be requested by private non-profit 501(c)(3) or public agencies to develop a new dementia-specific, social model program. Grant funds may not be used to support or expand the hours, days, or service capacity of existing social, health or medical model programs.

Geographic coverage Nationwide

Amount of funding Funding will be for up to a total of 40 Group Respite and Early Memory Loss programs. Grant support of $7,500 in year one, renewable for $3,000 in year two based on evaluation of first year’s activities and potential for future continuity of the program.

Ongoing technical assistance and support from the staff of the Technical Assistance Office in Berkeley, California and from The Foundation in New York City, which includes site bulletins, unlimited toll-free telephone support from staff, limited on-site support, periodic online chats, and participation in the Brookdale Respite Network of more than 200 sites. Technical assistance continues to be available to all programs that become self-sufficient and continue to follow either the Group Respite or Early Memory Loss program model.
 
Application process Application guidelines are available on the Program web site. 

For more information contact:
Carmen Mendieta, Director
Brookdale National Group Respite Program
2320 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Telephone: (510) 540-6734
E-mail: cm@brookdalefoundation.org