By Terrance E. Moore, MA, Chief Executive Officer, Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP)

By now, you’ve had an opportunity to experience AMCHP’s 2022 virtual Annual Conference: Reflecting on our Past, Shaping our Future!

I would like to give special thanks to the AMCHP staff, board, members, partners, and everyone else who contributed to the annual conference to learn about and tackle key issues in the maternal and child health (MCH) space. We are already looking forward to seeing everyone in person in New Orleans in 2023!

This month’s Pulse, titled “MCH Workforce Mental Health & Burnout,” is particularly noteworthy and timely. In conjunction with Mental Health Month, this issue will provide perspectives from the field, as well as strategies to support workforce wellness and resilience. As I continue convening my membership “Coffee Chats” series, one theme remains universal: rapid public health workforce burnout and turnover is a problem of increasing concern. AMCHP members continue to share that it is.

The topic of mental health is important to me in my leadership role at AMCHP. At AMCHP, we have an internal standing team charged with convening regular meetings to assess and discuss mental health at our organization and consider approaches for supporting ongoing staff mental and emotional health and wellbeing in our organization. This AMCHP team deployed a deidentified/confidential survey to all staff in January 2022 to accomplish two objectives:

• Learn how conducive AMCHP’s current environment and workplace policies are to the mental and emotional health and wellbeing of staff members
• Identify workplace policies and programs that can be instituted or strengthened to support the mental and emotional health and wellbeing of our staff.

Although the results from our survey were overwhelmingly positive, we take the approach that AMCHP, like other organizations, always has room for improvement.

As AMCHP continues to assess our own efforts, we continue to gather input and best practices on what we can do to redouble our support to our members as you continue to navigate workforce mental health burnout in your jurisdictions. Please join me in upcoming member coffee chat sessions on June 1 (Register) and July 13 (Register) to discuss this issue.

 In addition to my ongoing member coffee chat sessions, you can also share your challenges and your ideas for combatting workforce burnout through our five-year strategic planning process, currently underway. AMCHP is accepting comments and suggestions at SP22@amchp.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you for your commitment and for all you do to advance the health and wellbeing of all women, children, youth, families, and communities so that they may thrive. Please enjoy this issue!