Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
ACR 105 became Law!
SPAC will be meeting in Sacramento this weekend, and we plan to celebrate our many accomplishments. Thank you to Pedro Nava and his staff particularly Jackie Koenig, Caroline Vance and Jillena Eifer, and all of our supporters and partners for helping to make ACR 1o5 a success.
Stay tuned to learn more about the topic selected for SPAC's next piece of legislaiton.
Monday, April 12, 2010
ACR 105 Moves to the Senate, Women's Caucus Hearing, May 4 + Statewide Roundtable
Maternal Health Hearing May 4
Statewide PMAD Roundtable
We are extremely pleased to share that the California Research Bureau (CRB), which is the policy research arm of the legislature has agreed to convene a state-wide roundtable to evaluate Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD) issues across the state.
As our followers know, the intent of AB 159, The Healthy Mother's Act which "died" due to fiscal concerns, suggested the State Department of Public Health establish and convene a statewide perinatal mood and anxiety disorder task force to develop a best practices model for public awareness of PMAD and a standard of care for PMAD that may be used by physicians, medical centers, hospitals and other organizations related to the medical field. Therefore, SPAC and our many partners are extremely pleased with this outcome.
Julie Elginer, the SPAC Co-Chair who led most of these efforts had this to say about our recent progress:
"Given that we’ve accomplished all of this with virtually zero funds, I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve done over the last few months. While our collective advocacy work on this issue is nowhere near finished, we’ve made a very meaningful dent in terms of raising awareness and the profile of PMAD in California. The power of women volunteers! I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes:
'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.' -Margaret Mead"
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
SPAC Receives 1st LA Perinatal Task Force Partnership Award
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
ACR 105 Amended, SPAC "Convenes" in Pasadena
ACR 105 was amended on March 10, to recognize not just May 2009, but to recognize the month of May every year as Perinatal Depression Awareness Month in CA. Several additional legislators were added as co-authors as well.
Following is a link to the current version of ACR 105.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/acr_105_bill_20100309_amended_asm_v98.html
The Assembly Health Committee hearing is scheduled for March 23rd. Because all but one of the committee members have signed-on as co-authors, approval is set to occur via consent, meaning there is no need to testify. From the health committee, the bill will move to the Assembly Floor for a vote. The Junior Leagues State Public Affairs Committee (SPAC) delegates are hard-at-work outreaching legislators to request support and encourage more to sign-on as co-authors. Additionally, due to the efforts of the Los Angeles County Perinatal Taskforce, today the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to support ACR 105.
The CA Women's Caucus hearing is still tentatively set for May 4 in Sacramento. We encourage supporters of ACR 105 to attend. Julie Elginer, SPAC Co-Chair continues to work with interested parties on securing people to testify. The first 30 minutes will be dedicated to the impact of Perinatal Depression on the mother (sponsored by Junior Leagues of California SPAC) and the second 30 minutes will explore the impact of Perinatal Depression on infants, children and families (sponsored by the March of Dimes).
On Monday the following articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times about resources for those suffering from perinatal depression and the affects depression can have on families.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-depression-resources-20100315,0,2388201.story
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-depression-20100315,0,4880790.story
The CA SPAC delegates will convene in Pasadena this weekend for our annual Winter conference. Among other things, our delegates will be deciding which bills introduced by the CA Assembly and Senate to take support positions on, as well as to identify 1-2 additional pieces of legislation that SPAC will sponsor this year and/or next year. All of the bills that SPAC supports or sponsors must fall into one of our four focus areas: Violence Prevention, Health, Education or Family Support.
Friday, February 19, 2010
May 4, Save-the-("Hearing")-Date
The CA Women's Caucus has tentatively scheduled an informational hearing on ACR 105 (Perinatal Depression Awareness Month) for Tuesday, May 4 from 1:30 – 2:30 PM in Sacramento.
Julie Elginer, the SPAC Co-Chair is currently working with members of the L.A. County Perinatal Task Force on the messages that we want to convey and will begin securing speakers soon.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Concurrent Resolution Moves Forward
In summary after tremendous bipartisan support in the Assembly Health Committee, AB 159 was indefinitely held in suspense as part of the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Given that California is facing an additional $15-20B fiscal shortfall in 2010, SPAC needed to take a revised approach. In November, the SPAC delegation voted to pursue the three pronged approach of (a) a concurrent resolution, (b) working with the CA Women’s Caucus OR the CA Commission on the Status of Women to hold informational hearings on PMAD and (c) approaching the CA Research Bureau to consider a research publication on this issue.
Concurrent Resolution (ACR 105)
On December 11, 2009, SPAC leadership met with Jackie Koenig (Legislative Director for Assembly Member Nava’s office), Liz Fuller (Consultant to the CA Women’s Caucus) and Lucy Krohn (Chief of Staff for Assembly Member Saldana - Chair of the CA Women’s Caucus). At that time, SPAC submitted the language for the Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) which was the work of numerous stakeholders, including many of those who testified on behalf of AB 159. The resolution was modeled largely off of ACR 51 (Koretz – 2003), and declares the month of May 2010 as Perinatal Depression Awareness Month in California. The resolution also requests that the StateDepartment of Health Care Services, the State Department of PublicHealth, the State Department of Mental Health, First 5 California, Postpartum Support International, and other stakeholders to work together to explore ways to improve women’s access to mental healthcare at the state and local levels, to facilitate increased awareness andeducation about perinatal depression, to explore and encourage the useof prenatal screening tools, and to improve the availability of effectivetreatment and community support services. Nava's office introduced the resolution this week. There were nine co-authors upon introduction, which illustrates the bi-partisan support for this effort.
to review a copy of the resolution, please click on the following link:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=acr_105&sess=CUR&house=A&author=nava
Informational Hearings
The California Women's Caucus has expressed interest in holding a legislative briefing/hearing in May during Women's Health Month on issues impacting maternal health, including PMAD. The hearing will likely be coordinated with the Assembly Health Committee in Sacramento. This will allow the content to become public record, and content of such committees is circulated to all legislators, staffers and gubernatorial staffers through the daily “pink sheet.” The hearing is being targeted for either Tuesday, May 4 or May 11. However we have learned that it is entirely possible the hearing might not occur despite all our best efforts as it is not uncommon that items relating to the fiscal crisis or pending legislation force cancellation of scheduled hearings. If the hearing goes forward, SPAC will assist in the identification of speakers and will be involved publicizing the hearing. Please tentatively mark your calendars!
CA Research Bureau Request
A Policy Analyst has been assigned who has been assigned this topic, is incredibly motive to move this issue forward. He is in the process of developing a project proposal for his leadership within the Bureau. Additionally, he is interested in holding a larger “stakeholders” meeting soon. Names of following organizations were provided as interested stakeholders:
LAC Perinatal Mental Health Taskforce, PSI, CMA Foundation, ACOG, Office of Women’s Health, County Mental Health Directors Association and more.
For more information on Federal postpartum legislation, please see the Perinatal Pro Weekly Blog at http://perinatalpro.com/. This week's highlights include:
The MOTHERS Act now passed in Senate & Time Magazine includes Katherine Stone’s MOTHERS Act Letter among Best of the Year