First Class Pre-K

Here at Help Me Grow, we believe high quality early childhood experiences are a key factor towards a child’s long-term success. We are glad the state is expanding its First Class Pre-K program, and there have been recent events attended by many state and local officials featuring three child development programs.

A program of the Department of Children's Affairs

On September 19th there was a First Class Pre-K ribbon cutting event at Kitty Stone Elementary in Jacksonville. Del Marsh, President Pro Tempore of the Alabama Senate, State Representative K.L. Brown, and State Representative Randy Wood attended and gave insightful remarks about the importance of quality early learning. The event received media coverage from multiple news outlets including Fox 6, The Anniston Star/Jacksonville News, and AL.com.

A similar event was held on October 9th at University Daycare in Auburn. Mike Hubbard, Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, and State Senator Tom Whatley were both present and spoke about the high return on investment in early childhood. The Opelika-Auburn News, WSFA, and others have covered this story.

The last Pre-K classroom to hold an official ribbon-cutting in this series was at Heavenly Sent Learning Center in Foley, Alabama on October 14th. State Senator Tripp Pittman and State Representative Stephen McMillan were both on hand to join in the celebration. Both legislators serve on committees that appropriate funds which ultimately reach First Class Pre-K. Read more about the event in Foley from the Press-Register.

HMG National: Importance of Research

For those of you out there who are interested in the research behind Help Me Grow's model, you should definitely read HMG Founder Dr. Dworkin's latest blog post. He describes the importance not just of collecting data, but analyzing and presenting it in a way that is useful for discussion about policy formation and implementation. Visit his blog and learn more about why we do things the way we do them.

Photo Credit

HMG Utah in the News!

Our friends at Help Me Grow Utah were featured in their local news. This is a great clip that fully describes the value of Help Me Grow in just five minutes! We're excited to be bringing this service to Central Alabama and are actively looking for ways to grow it in other parts of our state.

Social Needs are as Important as Medical

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published a report that supports the idea behind last week’s post. We discussed that poor health outcomes are often not solely rooted in poor health inputs, but that there are frequently social influences which heavily impact wellness. In “Health Care’s Blind Side” it becomes clear that physicians frequently encounter health problems that are caused by unmet social needs. In a survey of 1,000 American physicians:

- 85% say unmet social needs are directly leading to worse health
- 85% say patients’ social needs are as important to address as their medical conditions
- 80% say they are not confident in their capacity to address their patients’ social needs

The physicians reported that if they had the power to write prescriptions to address social needs, such prescriptions would represent 1 out of every 7 they write. This study clearly illustrates that we cannot fix America’s overwhelming health concerns such as obesity, heart disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes without also addressing social concerns that play a factor.

Health Care’s Blind Side demonstrates why programs like Help Me Grow can be vitally important to bridging the gap between health concerns and social needs. A Help Me Grow care coordinator can spend time identifying a child’s physical needs and make appropriate referrals, and can also get an idea of a family’s possible social needs and help make connections to relevant services. While a Help Me Grow care coordinator’s priority is to address a child’s needs, we know that typically cannot be accomplished separate from the needs of the family. Help Me Grow and other partners are working to progressively address concerns of the health care system’s blind side.