PRE-APPLICATION WORKSHOPS: As you may know, pre-application workshops for CAP round III are taking place this week in Nashville, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.Applications are available on line at http://www.hrsa.dhhs.gov/CAP/application01.htm or by calling the Grants Application Center at 1-877-HRSA-123. The due date for completed applications is May 7th. More information can also be found in the Federal Register notice, also available on the web.

This funding does not relate to any potential additional funding for current grantees. Guidance on that topic coming soon, so stay tuned!

CAP ROUND II: Site visits for the 50 plus recommended for approval but unfunded grantees were completed in early February. Funding decisions are being finalized and grant awards should be announced in early March.

UPCOMING GRANTEE CONFERENCE: We are planning our second grantee conference for late April/early May. The conference will take place in Washington, D.C and will be have break out sessions on MIS, Clinical Issues, Legal concerns and more.  We are looking for grantee presenters in each of these areas—please contact Audrey Smolkin if you are interested in presenting your great work in any of these arenas. We are also interested in any feedback you may have to sessions you would like to see or other conferences suggestions. More details to follow!

Technical Assistance Calls

As you know, we have been having TA calls, every Tuesday from 1:00 to 2:30 EST, for all interested grantees throughout February. An updated schedule is below. Please note: Starting in March, the calls will be every other week, and the start time has shifted to 2:00 EST.

In order to register for the calls, please contact Angelique Raptakis (301-468-6006 ext. 501; ARaptakis@mac1988.com) with your name and contact information. Please contact us at least a week prior to the call to register. Shortly after registration, you will receive a call in number and access code. If you do not receive this call in information by the Monday before the call, please contact Angelique to get the information. If you believe you are registered for the February 20th MIS Demo tour and have not downloaded the necessary information or received a CD with the technical hook ups, please contact Joseph Cooper IMMEDIATELY at 414-257-5949.

Please Note: We are working on having March calls include a session on case management issues, a Clinical/MIS session on linking social services, “Disease Management 101,” a focus on mental health issues and an additional MIS call on project management and evaluation. Any feedback on suggested topics is greatly appreciated!

The website is up and running. You can reach it at: www.capcommunity.org. While the site will continue to be developed, it currently has links to all grantees, information on peer-to-peer support by area, and a bulletin board to ask questions. You can also use it to ask TA questions and link to MAC to get assistance and consultant recommendations. Just as a reminder, you can reach MAC for technical assistance by contacting Bill Kowgios or Kelly Garry-Burks at 1-301-468-6006 ext. 502 or ext. 504 or e-mailing Bill at bkowgios@mac1988.com or Kelly at kgarryburks@mac1988.com.

CAP COMMUNITIES FURTHER REDEFINE COLLABORATION

Now here's a collaborative with some reach-- how about 1000 miles along the U.S. - Mexico Border from El Paso, Texas to San Diego, California? This new fangled collaborative impacts two countries, four states, and we won't even calculate the number of counties. CAP grantees in El Paso and Tucson and applicants from Bisbee and Yuma have succeeded in establishing a network of 39 organizations to jointly address border health issues and have succeeded in marshaling significant support from State legislators. We have a major opportunity to assist by helping to better coordinate other HRSA and federal programs that support their efforts.

The grantees from large urban areas held their own mini-summit in Denver to share experiences and ideas more focused on challenges and opportunities indigenous to urban monoliths.

The new round of awards could well see multiple sites in the San Francisco Bay area and plans are forming the potential for these Bay Area brethren to work intensively together and to share information and resources in the context of a hybrid SUPER-CAP.

Late in April, we'll bring together the original 23 grantees with the 50+ being funded effective March 1st. We hope to see more matches made in further demonstration that "Communities Can!"

GRANT OPPORTUNITY: Reclaiming Futures is a $21 million RWJ initiative to build community solutions to substance abuse and delinquency by developing the systems infrastructure necessary to deliver comprehensive care within the juvenile justice system. Initial planning grants are available providing up to $250,000 per year, successful sites will be eligible for an additional four years of funding. Pre-application workshops are being held 3/30 in Portland and 4/6 in Baltimore. For more information, contact RWJ at 503-725-8913 or visit their website at www.reclaimingfutures.org.

UPCOMING CONFERENCE: Community-Campus Partnerships for Health is having its annual conference with eh them of “HEALTH for all in 2010: Confirming our Commitment, Taking Action” in San Antonio, TX, May 5-8, 2001. For more information on the conference and registration, please see futurehealth.ucsf.edu/ccph/projects.html#natlconf.

UPDATE ON COMMUNITIES IN CHARGE: Under its "Communities in Charge: Financing and Delivering Health Care to the Uninsured" program, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation www.rwjf.org has awarded 14 communities three-year grants to develop programs that address the needs of the uninsured through organizing, financing or providing care. The grants average $700,000 each. To receive a grant, communities had to have populations of at least 250,000, of which at least 15%, or 37,000, were low-income and uninsured. The program is intended to help communities address the problem of the uninsured through: better organizing and promoting prevention and intervention services, improving coordination and integration of services, monitoring access and quality and spreading financial risk among providers. The grants awarded comprise Phase II of the program; Phase I involved the groups' organization and planning efforts. The listing of grantees and more information can be found on the RWJ website.

PROGRAM EVALUATION FRAMEWORK: An adapted version of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's framework for program evaluation has recently been published by the Center for the Advancement of Community-based Public Health (CBPH). This new resource is titled "An Evaluation Framework for Community Health Programs." It is a public domain document that can be shared without restriction and can be accessed via the CDC Evaluation Working Group's website at http://www.cdc.gov/eval. The direct link is http://www.cdc.gov/eval/evalcbph.pdf

NEW WEBSITE: A new website with expanded coverage of health care and health care policy issues has been recently launched at www.communityvoices.org. As a project of Kellogg’s Community Voices initiative, the site contains information on national health policy and local efforts to improve health care and access.