Assessing the MCH Navigator Impact on knowledge and skills of the Title V/MCH Workforce

Background: The MCH Navigator is an online portal for maternal and child public health professionals and students. It provides a searchable resource inventory of free learning opportunities that address the MCH Leadership Competencies and assessment tools to assist users in addressing their strengths and weaknesses in key MCH and public health competencies. This poster presentation describes the project, demonstrates how the online self-assessment increases knowledge and skills, and assesses impact of the project in 5 areas.

Methods: Using a mixed-methods approach, project staff measured impact in 5 areas: (1) connecting federal program investments to states; (2) equipping professionals with training to conduct their daily work; (3) filtering current promising practices and trainings; (4) alerting the workforce to new knowledge; and (5) promoting a shared environment of learning.

Results: (1) 25% increase in access to learning opportunities, positive survey responses and materials developed to respond to expressed needs in the field; (2) 5% increase in self-assessment scores of knowledge and skills, 98% convergence of cross-walking trainings with MCH to public health competencies; (3) Over 250 literature searches used in compiling data that result in over 750 links to training organizations; (4) outreach to over 35,000 professionals and students; and (5) qualitative summary of focus group responses.

Conclusions: Access to online trainings grouped by competency/topic area is a preferred method of learning; providing a focused portal to annotated trainings improves usage of resources; online self-assessments provide a useful learning plan for users to map their learning goals.