Surveys were conducted with two local areas: East Tennessee , and Northwest Tennessee,

East Tennessee
Judy Johnson
1110 Seminole Drive
Johnson City, TN 37604
Phone (423) 434-4401
Fax (423) 434-4407
Description of effective Public Awareness and Child Find activities implemented in rural areas of your service region.
  • Personal contact and disseminating of materials.  She feels that backing the materials up with personal contact is vital to success.
Collaboration with other agencies in implementing public awareness or child find activities.
  • They have representatives on a local interagency council that meets every other month and on an Intermountain Collaborative team where just representatives from Birth to Three programs come together. The agency has a task force that looks at Public Awareness.
Process used to plan and implement public awareness and child find activities.
How does information regarding your services reach the most rural areas?
Resources received from Local Agencies

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Northwest Tennessee Sharon Wenz
Director of Child and Family Grant Program
340 Gooch Hall
University of Tennessee at Martin
Martin, Tennessee 38238
(901) 587-7119
Description of effective Public Awareness and Child Find activities implemented in rural areas of your service region.
  • TSponsor Radio advertising during Farm Reports.
  • Also utilize elected officials such as the county board of supervisors. Each supervisor is sent information, which they then disseminate in their community. They have found this effective because the county supervisor know the best place to distribute the information within the community. The Fond du Lac program keeps track of where the information is disseminated by asking the supervisors to let them know where they distributed the information.
  • Best source of referral has been local family practitioners and pediatricians. Over half of their referral come from doctors.
  • Word of Mouth is also a big factor
Collaboration with other agencies in implementing public awareness or child find activities.
  • March is Healthy Baby Month so all the agencies pitch in a hundred dollars each to run radio and print ads through the Month of March. They also run advertisements throughout the year in local papers and in community flyers. They really try to concentrate on keeping a target month such as March and a target month to send information out to physicians.
  • Each year a packet of information is sent out to referral sources. They have started to use a Physician Liaison, which has seemed to work very well. They identified the doctor that had the most number of referral and approached her about being a physician liaison. She accepted and it has worked really well. The agency sends the informational packets to her and she sends the information to the doctors. Then if the doctors have questions they call her. Works well because she is a practicing pediatrician with a strong interest in Early Intervention. In addition she knows when a new doctor comes to town and can get the information out to them. She also attends the Birth to Three Early Childhood Network, which is comprised of many agencies that deal with Birth to Five. They meet twice a year at the local hospital. At least 50 people show up for this meeting. The number that attends help everyone become familiar with each other thus enhancing a more collaborative approach. Diane feels that using other doctors is the best avenue to use for reaching other doctors.
Process used to plan and implement public awareness and child find activities.
  • No information available
How does information regarding your services reach the most rural areas?
  • WIC has been a tremendous friend they travel into different communities and set up clinics and are able to disseminate information. The Health Department also sends packets to all new moms containing information such as when immunization will be held, Birth to Three brochures, what WIC is, etc.
  • There is also another program out of The University of Wisconsin out of Madison that produces a month-by-month developmental newsletter that goes out to every new mom for the first year. They are usually 4-6 pages long and the Kiwanis club raises money and sponsors these newsletters. Then volunteers at the hospital put the newsletter together because they are printed in bulk and then mail them out. There are approximately 1000 babies born each year.
Resources received from Local Agencies

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