Current LAUNCH Links

National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day, May 9, 2012

Communicating the message of investing in children’s mental health is one strategy in the effort toward sustaining your programs, and Awareness Day offers an excellent opportunity. Building on last year’s terrific success, planning is underway among Project LAUNCH grantees across the country on how to best use Awareness Day to promote the importance of children’s social and emotional wellness.

Here are some resources to generate ideas and help you prepare for your community event:

• Fill out and submit your pledge form to share your plans with SAMHSA and the Caring for Every Child's Mental Health Campaign.
• Use the event checklist to help plan your event or activity.
• Use the Awareness Day 2012 proclamation template to ask your governor, mayor, or other local official to declare May 9, 2012, National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day. 
• View a list of the organizations supporting Awareness Day 2012. Learn how your organization can support the collaboration effort.
• Download Awareness Day graphics and fliers in English and Spanish.

This year’s Awareness Day theme is “trauma.” Children and youth who experience trauma display increases in stress hormones comparable to those displayed in combat veterans. Learn more about the behavioral health impact of traumatic events on children and youth.

Using Social Media to Increase Awareness About Supporting Early Childhood Policies
The Strong Foundations #B25 Social Media Campaign brings together organizations such as Child Trends and the Birth to Five Policy to increase awareness of the research-supported benefits of early childhood policies, via messages posted to Facebook and Twitter. Use the Campaign’s How-to Guide to help you navigate the process of incorporating social media into your communications plan.

Excellence in Community Communications and Outreach (ECCO) Recognition Program 2012 Call for Entries
Deadline: March 23, 2012
Description: The 2012 ECCO Recognition Program will showcase outstanding achievements in communications and social marketing by systems of care.
Eligibility: Applicants may submit communications and social marketing initiatives created and/or implemented between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2011. Categories for submissions include National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day, Community Outreach: Parents and Caregivers, and Community Outreach: Children and Youth.

Sustainability and Financing Resources

“Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work”
by Fay Hanleybrown, John Kania, and Mark Kramer
One year ago, Stanford Social Innovation Review published an article titled “Collective Impact.” The response to this article was overwhelming. Hundreds of organizations and individuals from around the world reached out to the authors to describe their own efforts and to express interest in learning more about how to undertake a collective impact approach. This new article, published in the 2012 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review, takes off from the original and provides greater guidance to those who want to initiate and lead collective impact initiatives.

A Tool for Using Data to Inform a State Early Childhood Agenda
The Center for Law and Social Policy has developed a new tool to help state policymakers better understand the context and conditions of young children from birth to age six. The tool includes a series of questions on how young children are faring on key indicators and provides links to online data sources that can help state leaders answer those questions. Once compiled, these data can be used to help develop a state early childhood agenda.

Additional Sustainability Tools and Resources

For more resources and upcoming events on sustainability, visit the Sustainabilityand Sustainability Resourcespages on the Project LAUNCH Web site.

Upcoming Events

Webinar: Methods Development in Dissemination and Implementation: Implications for Implementing and Sustaining Interventions in Child Welfare and Child Mental Health Service Systems
Date/time: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 12 noon–1:30 p.m. ET (11 a.m. CT, 10 a.m. MT, 9 a.m. PT)
Description: This Webinar from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s Learning Center concludes a speaker series on implementing and sustaining evidence-based programs. It provides constructive suggestions for creating the changes necessary at all levels of an organization in order to successfully adopt and implement evidence-based practices within child welfare and mental health organizations.
To create an account and register: http://learn.nctsn.org/course/category.php?id=15

Fourth National Medical Home Summit
Dates: February 27–29, 2012
Location: Philadelphia, Pa., and via Web cast
Description: The Fourth National Medical Home Summit will bring together the leading authorities and practitioners in the medical home field to discuss how it is working, where it has proven outcomes, what lessons have been learned, where it needs improvement, and what issues and challenges lie ahead. The summit will also be available via live Web cast.

Webinar: Service Delivery and a Public Health Approach
Date/time:Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 1–2:30 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT, 11 a.m. MT, 10 a.m. PT)
Description: Allison Metz, Ph.D., from the National Implementation Research Network will identify strategies used to sustain a continuum of evidence-informed promotion and prevention services and supports, including strategic partnerships, personnel development activities, contract management, and public/private partnerships.

Webinar: Mobilizing Evaluation Data for Sustainability
NEW date/time: Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 1–2:30 p.m. ET (12 noon CT, 11 a.m. MT, 10 a.m. PT)
Description: High-quality evaluation data are a critical element of communication messaging and outreach strategies. Presenters will focus on the types of outcome data that mobilize policymakers’ support for sustaining evidence-based services and systems change efforts.

Funding Opportunity

Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns
Deadline: June 13, 2012
Description: In this four-year initiative, the Innovation Center is offering a funding opportunity to test the impact of providing enhanced prenatal care interventions for women with Medicaid coverage who are at high risk of having a preterm birth. The initiative will test three distinct approaches to providing enhanced prenatal care delivery. Each approach provides a set of specific and comprehensive interventions to improve current, traditional prenatal care delivery and to address additional clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial factors that may be present during pregnancy and may contribute to preterm-related poor birth outcomes.