Honors, Awards and Achievements

On September 20, Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance (MANNA) honored Richard J. Cohen, PhD, FACHE, PHMC’s president and chief executive officer, at the MANNA Nourish Awards Luncheon. The annual event recognizes champions in the health care and nutrition fields.

In October, PHMC employee Eudora Burton was named a Local Hero by WHYY’s NewsWorks. Burton is a social services specialist for Opening Doors, a PHMC program initially funded by the Pew Foundation and currently supported by the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Opening Doors provides supports to PHMC affiliate National Nursing Centers Consortium’s Nurse-Family Partnership, the Philadelphia branch of a national nonprofit organization that provides first-time, low-income mothers with a public health nurse home visiting program. Burton helps mothers increase their knowledge and skills to secure safe, affordable housing for their families.

On July 1, Amy Miller, formerly the school director of Metropolitan Career Center’s (MCC) Community Technology Institute (CTI), was promoted to executive director of MCC. Miller has worked at MCC/CTI for the last 10 years. She received her bachelor’s degree from LaSalle University and her master’s degree in education from Holy Family University.

Health Promotion Council’s (HPC) Executive Director and PHMC Managing Director of Health Promotion Vanessa Briggs, HPC Deputy Executive Director Tinesha Banks and PHMC Research and Evaluation Group Senior Research Associate Caroline West were among the six authors of an article published in the August issue of the Journal of Asthma. “Asthma Prevalence in Philadelphia: Description of Two Community-Based Methodologies to Assess Asthma Prevalence in an Inner-City Population” examined “the local prevalence of asthma in Philadelphia communities and schools of low-income, disadvantaged children utilizing a grassroots approach that would access traditionally hard-to-reach families,” according to the publication.

On October 22, Yahoo News featured Community Health Data Base (CHDB) data on children and obesity, yielding national attention in an article about how greater parental stress is linked to children’s obesity, fast food consumption and reduced physical activity. CHDB has served the information needs of hundreds of organizations in Southeastern Pennsylvania (SEPA) by providing up-to-date and reliable community-level health and social service data. CHDB’s central component, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey, is one of the largest local health surveys in the country. To read the Yahoo News article in full, click here.

PHMC’s Neil Goldfarb is one of the authors of “Measuring Migraine-Related Quality of Care Across 10 Health Plans” in the August issue of The American Journal of Managed Care. The article features results from a study on migraine care conducted by Goldfarb and his colleagues during Goldfarb’s former position with Jefferson School of Population Health. Goldfarb now serves as executive director of PHMC’s Greater Philadelphia Business Coalition on Health, which launched in January 2012.

Grants

The Barra Foundation Community Fund awarded Interim House a grant of $2,000 in August toward general operating costs. Interim House provides a continuum of comprehensive services to women addicted to drugs and alcohol. This is the third consecutive year that Interim House received funding from the foundation.

The E³ Center West received a $13,000 capacity expansion grant from Philadelphia Youth Network. The West Philadelphia-based E³ Center, operated by The Bridge, an affiliate of PHMC, gives teens who have dropped out of school or are involved with the juvenile justice system new opportunities for education and employment training.

In October, The Philadelphia Foundation awarded $36,000 for the coming fiscal year to PHMC affiliate Joseph J. Peters Institute (JJPI), a nonprofit mental health agency providing outpatient assessment and treatment services in the area of sexual abuse. The grant recognizes JJPI as a “high-performing nonprofit organization at the Mission Impact life-cycle stage.” The grant is awarded from the Edward M. Story Memorial Fund in memory of his father, Samuel Story, and his mother, Mary Grosvenor; the Henry Griffith and Anna Griffith Keasbey Fund; the William M. and Helen M. Detwiler Memorial Fund; and the William J. McCahan 3rd Fund in memory of Thomas C. McCahan and Florence M. McCahan.

New Developments

As the role of data in health and human services, policy and business continues to grow, PHMC is pleased to announce the new PHMC Center for Data Innovation. Scheduled for a February 2013 rollout, the center will feature refined data collection technologies and tools to improve accessibility and timeliness of critical data to help organizations make better decisions and plan more effective programs.