WIRED International's Additional Medical Information Centers

WiRED International will install a record-breaking 37 Medical Information Centers (MICs) around the globe during Fall 2005, the largest number of Centers to open over any three-month period in WiRED's history.

Centro de Salud Perla Maria Norori, a medical teaching facility in Leon, Nicaragua, was the first beneficiary on October 12. Leon is Nicaragua's second largest city and is located 25 miles from the Pacific Ocean. This Center has been much anticipated and is greatly needed.

"People here are excited about this. This is something of great value to the medical staff," says Santiago Castellon Rodriguez, a local WiRED representative and a member of the Leon Rotary Club.

WiRED executive director Dr. Gary Selnow traveled to Leon for the opening ceremonies. "Given the recent hurricane affecting the area and resulting flooding, this event is particularly timely," he said. "Doctors predict bacterial problems of possible epidemic proportions, so the Center will help Leon's medical community research issues related to this anticipated problem."

On October 14, WiRED installed two MICs at teaching hospitals in Choluteca, Honduras - inaugurating WiRED's presence in this beautiful but impoverished country. "The needs here are great and this Center will address a serious information gap," says Rodriguez. "The staff and students (in Choluteca) are particularly grateful because there are no other such medical information programs anywhere in Honduras. They are excited to be the first to receive a Center."

Although WiRED is new to Honduras, Nicaragua has received several MICs over the past two years. Sponsors of the Nicaraguan and Honduran Centers include The Tiburon/Belvedere Rotary Club (CA) and Rotary International.

Iraqi's medical community continues to benefit from WiRED's work, although persistent violence and significant bureaucratic roadblocks have made progress dangerous and difficult.

Over the past two years, WiRED installed 19 MICs in the country, and is now working with the Iraqi Ministry of Health to identify 20 additional teaching hospitals for another set of Centers. WiRED plans to install four large Teleconference Centers (T/Cs) in Basrah, Baghdad, Mosel and Erbil, which will allow Iraqi doctors to hold workshops, lectures and seminars with hospitals outside of the country. WiRED's work in Iraq is underwritten by the U.S. Department of State, The Medtronic Foundation, Pfizer Inc., Affinity Internet Inc. and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.

After successfully testing a nursing training program developed in collaboration with the Edelman Institute, WiRED is preparing to implement the program in Iraq, where medical training is desperately needed. The U.S. Department of State is currently considering a proposal to fund the program.

WiRED returns to Eastern Europe as well, thanks to the generosity of The Medtronic Foundation. The months of October and November will be extremely busy in the Balkans, where approximately twelve MICs are to be installed in Kosovo and Serbia. Each MIC will be installed in teaching hospitals, medical schools or major clinics. Over the past year, Serbia received one Center in Belgrade and two in Novi Sad.

Previous WiRED projects in Kosovo have included training and research for eight community access centers used by war refugees to locate lost family members. As well, WiRED's Video Visit program was launched in Kosovo - its success led to similar programs in Albania and Iraq.

WiRED is grateful for its ongoing collaboration with the Marian Wright Edelman Institute, which has been instrumental in helping the organization grow from its humble beginnings in Croatia into the global, effective and efficient organization it is today.

Jumpstart, B-MAGIC Kicks Off New School Year

On August 27, Jumpstart celebrated its expansion in the Bayview and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods and kicked off a new school year by partnering in the B-MAGIC Back-To-School Backpack celebration. Blue skies and sunshine helped make the event great fun and a huge success.

Bayview Mobilization for Adolescent Growth in our Communities (B-MAGIC) is a neighborhood-based program for mobilizing community leaders, social service providers, schools, juvenile justice agencies, church communities and families in Bayview-Hunters Point. MAGIC aims to coordinate and improve youth services, and provide early intervention to reduce juvenile crime, strengthen families, and help children stay in school. The Backpack event marked Jumpstart's second year of involvment with MAGIC, and the first expansion of its service area.

Jumpstart’s Volunteer Coordinator, Sung Lee, was instrumental in the success of the BackPack event, organizing behind the scenes to ensure a good experience for over 3,000 attendees. Children, youth, and families from Bayview/Hunters Point visited Jumpstart's ten learning stations, the most popular of which were "letter fishing" and "community tree". Parents took home Jumpstart Family Involvement Materials that illustrate fun, easy, and innovative ways to enhance children's language, literacy and social relations in the home.

Jumpstart commends all of its new Corps Members, Team Leaders, volunteers, and staff who devoted their Saturday to enrich the lives of those in the Bayview/Hunters Point communities. The event was a wonderful way to inaugurate the 150 college students who will be serving in over 21 preschool classrooms throughout San Francisco.

Home Base Programs: An Option for Early Head Start

The San Francisco Early Head Start home-based program option supports pregnant women, children, and their families through home visits and group socialization experiences. The program serves pregnant women, infants and toddlers, birth to 36 months of age.

Early Head Start home visits provide comprehensive services to support and strengthen the relationships between infants, toddlers, and their parents. The strength and quality of these relationships are essential for optimal child development outcomes during this period of rapid social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Parents are encouraged and supported to later recreate and build on the activities that are introduced during the home visit.

The program helps pregnant women to gain health care before, during and after pregnancy. It also provides prenatal education on fetal development, labor and delivery, postpartum recovery, and the benefits of breast-feeding. There is follow-up with postnatal care after the baby is born.

One-on-one, 90 minute weekly parenting skills, educational home visits, and twice-monthly parent-child play groups provide socialization experiences for parents and for children.

The home-based program option is designed for families whose children and parents are primarily in the home environment and offers comprehensive Early Head Start services through regular home visits and group socialization experiences. It is the relationship between the parent and infant or toddler that provides the foundation from which very young children develop the social competence necessary for success in school and later in life. Similarly, it is the relationship with the home visitor that forms the foundation for effective service delivery. Comprehensive, high-quality home visitation services strengthen and support families so that they, in turn, can provide the best possible support for their child.

Children with Disabilities Served by Head Start

Head Start has long been a pioneer in providing inclusive early education programming to children with disabilities. San Francisco Head Start values early childhood inclusion, provides the natural setting for the participation of children with diverse abilities, and insures that at least 10% of enrollment slots are made available to children with disabilities. The program ensures the 10% enrollment factor by actively recruiting children with diagnosed disabilities as well as through screening and observation, and by identifying and referring for assessment children with suspected delays in development.

The program has developed a timely and systematic approach for screening each child for developmental, sensory, and behavioral concerns. In collaboration with each child's parent and within 45 days of enrollment, the program uses linguistically and age appropriate screening procedures as well as a coordinated review of pre-existing information which includes health and developmental history, medical reports and parental observation to identify children who may be in need of formal assessments.

For the first time, San Francisco State University graduate students from the Department of Special Education and Communicative Disorders have provided second level screenings for Head Start children who have been identified as possibly having a delay in speech and/or language development. As a more accurate measurement of the child's speech/language development increases the certainty of appropriate referrals for formal assessment, this second level screening is greatly appreciated by Head Start staff, parents, and the local school district.

By utilizing a range of community resources, including those within the University, Head Start is able to provide comprehensive services to children with special needs and their families.

In Memorium

Diversifying Leadership in Nursing: A Strategy to Correct Health Disparities

As a result of support from The California Wellness Foundation and Congressional earmark funding through the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos, the Diversifying Leadership in Nursing Program has been able to expand and extend the pilot program initially begun under a U-56 grant from the National Institutes of Health through the National Cancer Institute.

The original pilot program, funded for 3 years through June 2005, supported planning program content, recruiting key personnel, and establishing administrative links with both the Comprehensive Cancer Center and the School of Nursing at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Under the NIH-NCI funding, preceptorships were provided in the area of oncology at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. The new funding has allowed the program to expand the preceptorship experiences to all areas of nursing and better accommodate the interests of our students.

Four well qualified underrepresented students have been recruited from SFSU's Master of Science in Nursing program to begin their nursing research preceptorships in January 2006. These students will be matched with nurse-researcher preceptors who work in the students' fields of interest. Their work is overseen and coordinated by faculty advisors from SFSU to ensure that students fulfill the objectives of the MSN program. The Diversifying Leadership in Nursing program supports students by providing stipends to help offset their tuition expenses during the last year of their MSN program, including a summer research stipend, as well as support funds to enable them to participate in professional development activities such as travel to conferences and membership in specialty nursing organizations.

The students will work closely with their research preceptors for a full year, both in the research setting and in the clinic, where they can see first-hand how research is applied to improve patient care and extend the knowledge base for practicing nurses. Through their participation in professional organizations, the students are able to meet the leaders in their field of interest, hear the latest research presentations, and network with other professionals who share their interests.

In past years, four students participated in the original pilot program funded through the NIH and the National Cancer Institute. That program, a collaboration with UCSF's Comprehensive Cancer Center at Mt Zion, gave students the opportunity to work with nurse researchers in radiation oncology. Two students will finish at the end of Fall semester 2005, and the remaining two students expect to finish their thesis by the end of Spring 2006.

Program directors are confident that all these students will contribute much to the nursing profession over the course of their careers. They will serve as role models for future generations of nurses, and through their research, teaching, and clinical work, they may help reduce health disparities that have existed for decades.