The University of Illinois at Chicago Maternal and Child Health Program will hold its pioneering MCH Leadership Retreat in Chicago in July 2008. We are currently exploring July 16-18, 2008 and July 23-26, 2008 as possible dates so if you would like to take a retreat in the beautiful city of Chicago during the summer, please save these dates! July is a great month in the city!
As many of you know, in 2007, we offered our 20th annual, national UIC MCH Leadership Conference on Translating Research into MCH Practice. The conference presented interdisciplinary research on MCH issues and provided participants with many opportunities to contribute to real-time policy development as well as opportunities to enhance their ability to work with data. We concluded our 20th conference with an inspiring session about personal leadership development and MCH. Participants discussed their MCH passions and left the conference with a sense of their MCH mission and the work they must do to make a difference in MCH.
We have just received funding for three more years of national conferences from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. For this next round, however, we are planning something new and different to meet the ever-changing needs of the MCH work force, particularly the young work force. Our MCH Leadership Retreat will continue to focus on evidence-based research and practice but will focus on personal leadership development and the development of a community of interdisciplinary MCH professionals at all levels of academia and practice, providing special opportunities for community building to new and emerging leaders in the MCH work force. Our planning committee includes senior academic and practice professionals (8+ years) and newer (and new) academic and practice professionals (0-7 years). The committee is very excited and enthusiastic about developing and offering this new conference approach to the MCH work force.
The retreat will be highly interactive with many opportunities to engage in thoughtful, intellectual conversations and activities with your MCH colleagues (new and senior). We believe that the bringing together of wisdom, ideas, and energy from both senior and emerging MCH leaders will contribute to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new research, new collaborations and new programs to improve MCH. Further, we are committed to the retreat concept and will offer opportunities for self-reflection, self-care and rejuvenation. We believe that the retreat and community-building aspects of this program are as important as understanding and developing the evidence-base for MCH practice. The MCH workf orce (academic and practice) works hard to improves the lives of our women, children, and families! We all could use time to connect and refuel!
If you find this concept interesting and exciting, please register early. Registration will be open on our Web site at www.uic.edu/sph/mch in early 2008. If you are a new or senior interdisciplinary MCH academic or practice professional and want to know more about this retreat or would like to participate in the planning activities, please contact Kris Gupta, DrPH, at (312) 996-2875 or kygupta@uic.edu.