Our Director of Special Events, Kelly Christianson, has been working around the clock to put together what is sure to be a phenomenal fundraiser – the 2011 Greater Twin Cities Signature Chefs Auction!

The Signature Chefs Auction features incredible chefs from the community, such as Chef Asher Miller from Tucci Benucch, Chef Jorge Guzman from Solera and Chef Anthony Leonhardi from Salut Bar Americana! It is bound to be a fantastic night filled with great food, wine and amazing auction items!

San Francisco’s Bay Area division just raised over $700,000 with their Signature Chefs Auction – let’s see the Greater Twin Cities edge them out!

The event is tomorrow – Thursday, September 29 at McNamara Alumni Center. Doors open at 6:00 with the silent auction and tasting. The program and live auction start at 8:15.

First, the Women’s Health Research Conference was amazing! Expect a more thorough follow-up soon (so, you know, in a few weeks…).

Second, great news on the newborn screening/CHD front! Expect a post on that later today!

The Greater Twin Cities Signature Chefs Auction is tomorrow!

The March of Dimes Nurse of the Year Awards is October 8 at the Hyatt in Minneapolis! This event is going to be incredibly moving. I’ll be honest, I teared up a couple of times reading through the testimonials…

Last, but VERY certainly not least, I’ve started working on a fantastic preterm birth initiative. Again – more details to follow!

The conference will “focus on presentations that inform the audience about the latest evidence-based methods to address numerous perinatal health concerns of women and infants.” Learning objectives for the 2011 conference include:

• Describing national priorities in women’s health research.
• Outlining the depth and breadth of research on women’s health that is
currently being conductedin this region.
• Identifying opportunities for interdisciplinary research.
• Describing 2 methods for integrating preconception care (well-woman)
messages into existing healthcare services for women of
reproductive age.
• Naming 2 simple evidence-based measures/lifestyle changes that
impact maternal & child outcomes.
• Describing how health issues for women during & following pregnancy
impact women later in life.
• Describing 2 types of supportive (non-medical) interventions for women
with perinatal depression.
• Describing 1 change they will make in their clinical practice to
incorporate (well-woman –preconception messages in order to
improve overall health for women and to improve patient outcomes
during and following pregnancy.

I’m using some of my March of Dimes hours to attend, so I’ll be taking extensive notes (and hopefully some photos!) and will put together a recap later in the week.

I was only able to get into the office Tuesday of last week, but I definitely filled those hours! I was excited to do some work for the NICU Parent Support Program, including creating a database of parent contact information and designing new contact cards for the program to use (my first time using Microsoft Office Publisher…eesh!). I was careful to use March of Dimes specific branding colors and images and I think they turned out very well. I hope to see them in use later in the year!

Also on my to-do list was a task I’d never done before: calling Minnesota representatives in Washington, DC, to set up meetings with a March of Dimes delegation. I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with any of our busy representatives, but I spoke with their lovely schedulers and was redirected – by every single one! – to request meetings via email.

I’ll be honest, it took me a little while (and the courage to ask for help) to figure out how to dial out on my office phone. Was I born in the wrong generation? Am I the grandparents on the webcam?!

My last task of the day – and the one that is currently plaguing me with guilt, because I wasn’t able to go in on Wednesday morning as planned to finish it – was helping catalog some of the auction items and prizes for the upcoming Signature Chefs Auction. If you are in the Twin Cities area and love great food, babies and a good time, look into going! I’ll be there as long as my aforementioned crazytime schedule allows!

Annie thoughtfully considering her future career as a chef...

My first week at the March of Dimes was a flurry of office introductions and getting set up in my little intern office. I went through a brief orientation on logging into March of Dimes operations and remote desktop functions, then finished an online orientation on the March of Dimes mission. I was also able to sit in on the orientation of a new employee, which was incredibly interesting – though I imagined that quite a bit goes on behind the scenes of a smoothly-functioning nonprofit organization, I never would have guessed the amount of planning and detail goes into each and every post within the NPO.

I was very happy to have the opportunity to help re-write October’s mission message from the Minnesota branch, which involves pregnancy and flu shots. In addition to a standard-issue memo, I helped revise some radio PSAs, which was fun (I hope nobody in the office thought I was talking to myself in the back – I was timing myself to ensure the messages would fit in the intended :15 and :30 spots!).

I know that some women are reluctant to receive flu shots during pregnancy (and since pregnant women who aren’t at high risk for infections like rabies, Hepatitis B and the like aren’t usually advised to get immunizations in the prenatal period, it’s no wonder!), but getting the flu vaccine (not the nasal mist, which contains a live virus) is essential to protecting the health of both the mother and the developing baby. Read more about the flu shot in pregnancy here.

For more information on vaccinations during pregnancy, check out the March of Dimes fact sheet on the topic.

This semester I will be spending 120+ hours working with the Greater Twin Cities branch of the March of Dimes, the nation’s foremost nonprofit organization working for optimal prenatal and newborn health. My goals are to gain general experience working from a non-volunteer standpoint in an NPO and to build on existing knowledge of public policy and advocacy work in perinatal health.

In the next four months, I will hopefully build on my research and literature review skills, strengthen ties with the Minnesota Department of Health, help plan and execute education campaigns for Prematurity Awareness Month and attend at least one event as an intern of the organization in order to improve networking skills.

Find more information on the March of Dimes here.