Utah Awarded its Very First Promising Practice for its work with Pacific Islanders

(Salt Lake City, UT) – During Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) Office of Health Disparities (OHD) is proud to announce receiving Utah’s first Promising Practice Award for its work with Utah’s Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities.

The Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP) awarded OHD’s It Takes a Village: Giving our babies the best chance (ITAV) project as a Promising Practice because of its unique and innovative anthropological approach to addressing birth outcomes disparities among Utah's NHPI communities. The ITAV project weaves Pacific Islander cultural wisdom and practices with current maternal and child health recommendations to engage and educate community members.  

The award came with the recommendation to pursue the most prestigious designation of Best Practice, which OHD hopes to pursue.

AMCHP is the foremost national organization working to improve maternal and child health. “As part of its commitment to serve as a national resource … AMCHP collects, reviews and disseminates cutting-edge, emerging, promising, and best practices from public health programs across the U.S. so that effective models can be shared and replicated among the [Maternal and Child Health (MCH)] community.”

The project would not have been possible without federal funding from the UDOH Bureau of Maternal and Child Health (Maternal and Child Health Services Title V Block Grant) and the Federal Office of Minority Health (State Partnership Grant to Improve Minority Health) along with countless collaborations among UDOH programs and community partners.  

More information about the ITAV Promising Practice can be found at http://www.amchp.org/programsandtopics/BestPractices/InnovationStation/Pages/IS-BP-Search.aspx and http://health.utah.gov/disparities/itav-project.html.

The vision of the Utah Department of Health Office of Health Disparities is for all people to have a fair opportunity at reaching their highest health potential given that health is crucial for well-being, longevity, and economic and social mobility.