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"When I was new to breastfeeding, the support from my peer counselor was so incredibly helpful and I breastfed for a year and a half. I was only planning to do it one year."
~ Riverstone WIC Mom ~ |
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Please keep track of your hours for this month and share your numbers with the person who fills out the Expenditure Reports. Email your tracking sheet to Susan Wensel our Financial Specialist at Susan.Wensel@mt.gov. |
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The State Office will be holding the next New Employee Training (NET) March 9th and 10th. This will be a remote training using Teams or Zoom. This training is required for all WIC staff within 1 year of being hired or is a great refresher for current staff. If you or your staff need to attend NET, complete the sign up and submit via email to Lacy by January 29th. The tentative agenda has been provided. |
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Some stores in Montana have adapted their practices to reduce the risk of COVID-19 such as accepting eWIC cards at self-checkout lanes. This can limit the interactions customers have with store staff and help move them through the checkout quickly - as long as they don’t have too many groceries. There are almost forty stores across the state that accept eWIC at self-checkout, including many Safeway and Albertsons locations, Wal-Mart stores, WinCo, and some Smith’s locations. We anticipate more stores will enable this, and please let Kevin know if there are others stores in your area accepting WIC at self-checkout.
Please let your participants know this may be an option at some stores and remind them eWIC is often listed under “other payments” on the touchscreen. If there is confusion regarding items that did or did not ring up for WIC, self-checkout can make it more challenging to identify those specific items, and please encourage WIC customers to always alert the store attendant if a problem arises
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There has been an uptick in calls to Solutran to have benefits loaded on to participant accounts. It is possible WIC participants are confusing WIC with SNAP in terms of how to obtain the next set of benefits. Please remind participants that they need to complete their appointments for each new set of benefits to be loaded. |
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The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) has an opening for an MCH Epidemiologist in the Early Childhood and Family Support Division (ECFSD). This position will provide epidemiological support to the divisions’ MCH programs. The Epidemiologist will be responsible for designing and implementing program needs assessments and evaluations, conducting continuous quality improvement activities, authoring surveillance reports, and designing data collections to help monitor program performance measures. The position closes on 2/12/2021; however, interested applicants are encouraged to submit their application package as soon as possible.
In order to be considered for this position, you must apply through the State of Montana online recruitment system:
https://mtstatejobs.taleo.net/careersection/200/jobdetail.ftl?job=21140059
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Please save the date for the upcoming 2021 Montana Breastfeeding Learning Collaborative (BLC), which will be held as a virtual webinar on April 20th, and focus on advanced lactation support topics including:
- Breastfeeding & Maternal Mental Health
- Implications of COVID 19 & Breastfeeding
- Native Breastfeeding Week & Breastfeeding as Food Sovereignty
- BreastSide™ Manner & Assessment of Non-White Skin Tones
- Infant Food Allergies & Breastfeeding …. and more.
Continuing Education: additional information will be provided upon approval. Sponsored by the Montana Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and MT DPHHS Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Bureau - Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative Program (BFHI) we welcome you to Montana’s premier conference on infant nutrition and lactation.
Target audience includes - physicians, nurse practitioners, lactation specialists, WIC clinic staff, public health professionals, hospital staff, health clinic staff, dietitians, nurses, and other interested healthcare advocates.
Registration will open Friday, February 12 at 9:00am! We will have a WIC Code soon. www.umt.edu/ces/conferences/blc/default.php [umt.edu] *NEW THIS YEAR* Pre-conference Sessions: Two “special topic” sessions will also be open to the general public during the WIC/BFHI meetings on April 19th for an additional nominal fee of $20. For those who register, webinar access will be granted to the following afternoon sessions:
“Caring for Our Community during COVID-19: How Perinatal/Lactation Workers Can Protect Themselves, Clients & Business” presented by Laurel Wilson, IBCLC, CLE, BSc, RLC, CLD, CCCE
“Does Breastfeeding Protect Maternal Mental Health? The Impact of Oxytocin and Stress” presented by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D., IBCLC, FAPA. View Agenda page for session descriptions.
Attendee “Welcome” Kit: The first 100 attendees who register will receive a “welcome” conference box filled with promotional, fun, and informative items shipped directly to the participate. Supplies are limited, so make sure to be one of the first to register (Registration opens Feb. 12 at 9am)!
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The National WIC Association (NWA) invites all local WIC agency Directors and Staff to complete the ADVANCING HEALTH EQUITY TO ACHIEVE DIVERSITY & INCLUSION (AHEAD) IN WIC Survey! This survey will remain open until January 31.
As a reminder, NWA received a grant from the Walmart Foundation in 2019 to support a two-year project aimed at Advancing Health Equity to Achieve Diversity & Inclusion (AHEAD) in WIC.
The project is focused on internal organizational development at NWA and funds internal equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives for NWA staff and also seeks to systematically build capacity within the larger WIC community to incorporate a health equity framework into WIC research, policy, and practice.
As part of the AHEAD project, NWA is working with the Nutrition, Obesity, and Health Equity Research Laboratory (NOHE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago to conduct a landscape scan of promising practices at the WIC state and local level related to EDI practices being implemented across the country. It’s important to us that this project is member-driven.
We need your help to identify promising health equity practices, which we define as the best approaches to improve the WIC participant clinic experience, and strategies to effectively address social, environmental, and economic conditions to improve health. We’d also like to learn more about the training and resources needed to support implementation and dissemination of those practices.
This survey is not a test. You and your agency will not be judged or scored based on your survey responses. We are interested in hearing more about existing efforts and programs at the community level, your perceptions about current health equity practices in WIC, and future directions for health equity work in WIC. The survey is confidential. Individual responses will not be shared in written documents or reports without your permission.
It will take approximately 30 minutes to complete the survey. We’ve included a PDF of the final survey if any respondents find it helpful to review the full survey before responding. Respondents who wish to complete the survey in multiple sessions will need to access the survey on the same device each time in order to do so.
As a final reminder, this survey is intended for local WIC agency Directors and Staff. A separate survey will be emailed out to State WIC agencies. You can access the survey and PDF here:
For questions, please contact:
Quinney Harris, MPH Director of Health Equity and Community Partnerships qharris@nwica.org
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