Field Placement: Los Angeles County Department of Health Services -- Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health
Preceptor: L'Tanya English
Student Name: Emily Elman
Year: 2002

My internship placement during the summer of 2002 was with the Los Angeles County Department of Health in the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Department. The majority of my activities were focused in two different units within MCAH: the Research, Evaluation, and Planning (REP) Unit and the Perinatal Outreach and Education (POE) Program. My preceptor was L'Tanya English, program manager for the POE Program.

The REP Unit works in collaboration with all eight MCAH perinatal and child health programs to effectively implement, research and evaluate the programs' impact and performance. With the Research, Evaluation, and Planning Unit, I participated in multiple activities related to the creation of an evaluation platform for MCAH. Entitled the Data Use Institute (DUI) Project, the REP Unit's main objective was to implement procedures and processes to better streamline and integrate the evaluation systems of the eight perinatal health programs of MCAH. Utilizing the Mark Friedman Results-Based Accountability Model, Participatory Action Research, and Deming's Continuous Quality Improvement Cycle, the REP Unit worked closely with each program to design effective data collection and evaluation methods. One of the main activities I participated in to achieve this goal was the development of performance measures for each of the perinatal health programs. These performance measures represent the main activities undertaken by each program. The next step was to derive headline performance measures that would serve to demonstrate MCAH's performance as a whole. In addition to these activities, I assisted in the development of a Client Based Referral Guide that attempted to streamline and integrate client referrals and information sharing among the MCAH programs.

Utilizing the framework identified in the DUI project, I also worked closely with the Perinatal Outreach and Education (POE) program to develop and refine a relevant and meaningful evaluation system. As one of MCAH's eight programs, POE operates through eight contracts with community based organizations to deliver three major service components: outreach, health education, and case management. Targeted to low-income women of childbearing age, POE's main objectives are to increase access to health insurance, increase access to health care, and to ensure healthy pregnancy and birth outcomes. With the REP Unit, I worked with POE to identify performance measures that effectively captured the program's main service components. Next, I assisted in the creation of a revised POE data collection template that reflected the performance measures chosen. While a plan to implement this data collection template to the contracting agencies is currently under review, the hope is that it will be piloted to at least two agencies within the fiscal year. In addition to the POE data collection template, I also helped to develop other instruments, such as the POE Monthly Program Report and Support Group Logs, in order to improve POE's overall data collection and evaluation system.

Through my work with both the REP Unit and the POE Program, I was exposed many different components of MCAH. My work with the REP Unit allowed me to get a sense of the larger structure of MCAH, while my work with POE allowed me to become proficient with the components of one particular program. Overall, I enjoyed my experience with MCAH and felt that I gained many skills at the programmatic level in a large, county health department setting.

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