The Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center is planning two virtual events in September for maternal health professionals. Because this is the first time we are hosting these events and COVID-19 has changed our planned scheduling, we want to provide a little bit more detail about these events and how state MHI/RMOMS teams may engage with them.
Though these events are different, one thing is the same—both will be held virtually.
| National Maternal Health Innovation Symposium | Fall Learning Institute | |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A national learning and innovation conference, highlighting maternal health innovations from around the country. The Symposium will include pre-recorded content and live plenaries featuring speakers talking about maternal health issues, with a focus on equity and innovation. | This Learning Institute will pick up where MHLIC left off in May, leaning into new innovations, skills and tools to advance maternal health innovation. The Learning Institute is designed specifically for and only open to state MHI/RMOMS teams, and the MHLIC team. |
| When is it? | September 23 & 24, 2:00-5:00 PM ET (both days) | September 29 & 30, 12:00-4:30 PM ET (Day 1); 12:30-4:30 PM ET (Day 2) |
| Who should attend? | The Symposium is appropriate for anyone invested in improving maternal health outcomes, including public health professionals, health care providers and administrators, community groups, advocates, policy makers, researchers, and many others. It is not limited to state MHI/RMOMS teams, so we encourage you to share broadly with your colleagues and networks. | The Learning Institute is only open to State MHI, RMOMS, and the MHLIC team. |
| Are we limited in how many people from our teams attend? | No! Anyone can register to attend. | We are asking that between 5 to 7 individuals from each team attend the virtual Learning Institute. We encourage State MHI teams to select their project director, program manager or program coordinator, epidemiologist or data coordinator, MHTF facilitator and any representatives from key partners involved with the innovation strategies to attend. Likewise, we encourage the RMOMS teams to select from their project/network directors, network governing board members, program coordinator, data collection leads or providers. In addition, key partners with whom you have existing relationships, including consumer and community partners, are welcome to participate. Because we want to keep sessions small enough for interaction, we limit the number of attendees. |
| What sort of content can I expect? | There will be both pre-recorded short sessions and live, plenary sessions. Spark Sessions – Pre-recorded, short videos featuring maternal health innovations from across the country Plenary Sessions—Engaging speakers talking about how we can improve maternal health outcomes | Similar to the Spring Learning Institute, the September Learning Institute will include breakout sessions which include topic specific presentations, discussions, and skills building sessions. We will likely ask participants to help lead some of the discussion sessions, similar to the May Learning Institute. |
| How can I register? | Find registration information here. | Check with your MHI or RMOMS project lead for more information. The registration form can be found here. |
Why are both of these events in September?
MHLIC originally planned to offer one in-person Learning Institute each year for state MHI/RMOMS teams (our year runs October 1-September 30) and one in-person Maternal Health Symposium for a broader audience of maternal health advocates.
MHLIC originally planned to offer a three-day, in-person Learning Institute in Spring of 2020. However, when COVID-19 made it impossible to hold in-person events, MHLIC pivoted to a virtual Learning Institute. Because we thought three days in front of a computer would make engagement difficult, we decided to offer two shortened Learning Institutes with one happening virtually in May and one happening September. We were optimistic that the second Learning Institute could be in-person and had planned to have it on the day after our planned Maternal Health Symposium. This would help minimize travel. Unfortunately, we were not able to host in-person events in September, so we pivoted again to virtual events. We’ve broken the content up over several days.
We hope that we will be able to meet in-person next year and are already working on our calendar of events.
We are so grateful that we’ve had several opportunities this year to learn with state MHI/RMOMS teams. We always want to hear from state MHI/RMOMS partners about how training can best fit their needs. Please email Alice Pollard at alicepollard@unc.edu with any questions.