5 minute read
BRAIN BAG UPDATE
BY Shannon Nickinson
STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE
Not even a pandemic can stop babies.
While the COVID-19 pandemic changed countless things about our world in 2020, one thing that didn’t stop was baby births.
And thanks to the support of the community, the Studer Community Institute’s cornerstone project — the Brain Bag — kept getting to parents. Since the spring of 2017, the Brain Bag has been a learning tool shared with parents to help them use and harness the power within themselves to build their child’s brain.
More than 18,000 of the kits have been shared since the program began, with some 4,494 going home with parents in the pandemic year of 2020.
Laurel Woodfin Farrell of Pensacola was among some of those grateful 2020 parents. She said the Brain Bag helped her learn so many helpful ways she can help her son grow.
“My 5-month-old loves his water mat for tummy time. We also started doing a little tummy time each day from Day 1,” she said. “I didn’t know babies should start that early until I read about it in our Brain Bag at the hospital. Now he loves it and spends a lot of time on his tummy playing throughout the day.”
Kathleen Whibbs’s twins were among the first Brain Bag bags in the program. As grateful as she is for the advice and support the program has brought her family, her work as a nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital allowed her to see the impact on other families, too.
“When you just have a baby, especially if it’s your first, you are confused, excited and emotional. (The Brain Bag) gave you something tactical to do with your child,” Whibbs said. “In the (neonatal intensive care unit) and labor and delivery, as a nurse, I would see the parents at bedside reading, and it was their first connection with their child as a parent.”
HOW IT STARTED
SCI’s Early Learning City effort works to improve kindergarten readiness in the community by giving parents the understanding of the power of language and interaction in the first three years of life to build a child’s brain.
That early brain development is key to the foundation of a child’s readiness for school and ultimately for putting that child on a path for success in school and life. That is crucial in Escambia County, which state education data indicates has a kindergarten readiness rate of 48 percent (as of 2019, the most recently available data).
Dneisha Moultrie is among many parents who use the Brain Bag, which provides tools, tips and books to help them build their baby’s brains.
When the Institute’s work began, kindergarten readiness stood at 45 percent.
That means more than half of our children are missing some of the fundamental language and academic skills they need to be ready for school.
In 2020, SCI added a partner hospital — Santa Rosa Medical Center — thanks to a sponsorship by Sandi Kemp, publisher of The Navarre Press. That added 365 families to the program.
WHAT’S NEXT
Two years ago, a team from Cincinnati, Ohio, wanted to learn more about the program, and 2020 was the second program year of the version conducted under TriHealth’s network of in-hospital, pediatric and family practice clinics in the southern Ohio city.
TriHealth hospitals account for about 9,200 births per year, with another 9,000 to 10,000 pediatric visits in their family medicine and primary care practices, according to Stacy Heller, the program coordinator for the project.
The first year of the program, they gave out 17,784 Brain Bags, including children up to age 18 months in the “catch up” period where they tried to reach as many TriHealth families as possible.
COVID-19 was part of the reason for the catch-up period, putting the team about six months behind, mostly due to supply chain issues. Part of the catch-up effort also included children who use TriHealth pediatric clinics but weren’t delivered at a TriHealth hospital, transferred into the system or otherwise missed receiving a bag.
TriHealth also has made it part of the electronic medical record system to document that families received their bag. If that button isn’t clicked, it’s a flag to staff at subsequent wellbaby appointments to review the material with parents.
Ultimately, when those Brain Bag babies age up to 4 years old, the electronic medical record will include documenting that school readiness screening was done, too.
In clinic settings, medical assistants manage the handoff and education related to the Bag.
“Parents love the fact that they can make a difference without tools,” said Dr. Joseph Bailey, the pediatrician leading the charge on this program. “They didn’t know just plain old talking could be such a help to their child.”
Bailey says when he presented the program during the roll-out stage, he knew he would be asking staff to do more work. How did they receive the news?
“They applauded” when he finished the presentation, he said. “Once people realize they can make a difference, they want to.” The Brain Bag is built around a video lesson, based on a two-year research partnership with the University of Chicago’s TMW Center. That research showed that a video lesson built on a handful of key teaching points can effectively boost mom’s knowledge about early brain development and the role parent talk and interaction have in that development.
It also includes a storybook, P is For Pelican, the ABCs of Pensacola, which uses landmarks in our community to build letter awareness and encourage family reading; Baby Steps, a baby book that can be personalized to help parents track early brain development milestones in the first three years of life; a toy; and community resource information to help support parents.
The Brain Bags are stored, assembled and delivered by Arc Gateway’s Pollak Industries, which offers life- and work-skills training for adults with developmental disabilities.
The Brain Bag survey to ask moms two questions: On a scale of 1–to–10, rate your knowledge of how parent talk influences early brain development before the Brain Bag, and then rate it after. Here is how the responses breakdown by hospital.
