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Published in: Maternal and Child Health Journal 2/2015

01-02-2015 | Commentary

Challenges and Opportunities Facing Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Professionals

Author: Laura Kavanagh

Published in: Maternal and Child Health Journal | Issue 2/2015

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Excerpt

The challenges facing today’s maternal and child health (MCH) professionals will require leaders who can adapt to a dramatically changing public health and health care landscape, and also make decisions and move forward with incomplete information [1]. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Affordable Care Act) outlines promising new opportunities for seamlessly moving between personal health care and population health, which are critical if as a nation we are to achieve the triple aim of health reform of improved quality, increased emphasis on population health, and decreased costs [2, 3]. However, challenges also abound. Areas of concern include shrinking public health budgets, an aging workforce, reorganizations, furloughs, and vacant public health positions for which health agencies are not recruiting [4, 5]. MCH professionals have a long and rich history of successfully overcoming challenges to assure the health of the nation’s mothers and children, as evidenced from the very beginning of support for MCH public health professionals in the US. …
Footnotes
1
If you have additional feedback as what you see as the most pressing areas for MCH workforce development, please correspond with the author.
 
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Metadata
Title
Challenges and Opportunities Facing Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Professionals
Author
Laura Kavanagh
Publication date
01-02-2015
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Maternal and Child Health Journal / Issue 2/2015
Print ISSN: 1092-7875
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6628
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-014-1661-2

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