2024 Awareness Event & Champion Awards
The Council held our 2024 Annual Kids Chronic Health Awareness Event and Community Celebration at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, NH on Thursday, July 11th. We honored four Champion Award winners who demonstrate compassion and leadership within their communities and announced Council member Jennifer Burbank as the recipient of the 2024 Audrey Gerkin Leadership Award.
A Proclamation from Governor Sununu’s office was announced, establishing July 7th – 13th as Childhood Chronic Condition Awareness Week, and we read letters from Senators Hassan and Shaheen, who sent their well-wishes.
MCH Workforce Development Center Learning Journey
In March of 2024, Council Director Leah Stagnone travelled with a team from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services to San Diego, California for a week of learning and workshops with the National Maternal Child Health Workforce Development Center 2024 Training Institute.
During the Training Institute and the months that followed, this team of diverse stakeholders collaborated to examine systems impacting children with chronic health conditions and their families and identified opportunities for transformation and family engagement.
The group’s efforts culminated in two days of workshops co-hosted by NH DHHS, NH CYCC, and NH Family Voices, during which participants with lived and professional experience came together to build a vision for a well-functioning system of care. CYCC looks forward to continued collaboration in 2025 as we build on all we learned from this project and plan next steps.
Expanding Our Reach
In 2024, CYCC was proud to expand our reach in the community both online and in-person. We built an email list to share updates with the community and launched a quarterly newsletter that quickly collected over 120 highly-engaged subscribers. CYCC became more active on our existing Facebook and X/Twitter accounts and launched our presence on both Instagram and LinkedIn.
CYCC also increased our direct interaction with the community, hosting information tables at events including: the 2024 Family Support Conference, 2024 Rare New England Annual Conference, 2024 Bipartisan Disability Caucus Legislative Luncheon, and a GoBabyGo workshop where New Hampshire high school students and teachers adapted battery-powered rideable cars for children with disabilities. Additionally, CYCC presented about our work and the issues that impact youths with chronic health conditions at meetings hosted by local hospital pediatrics departments, state agency service providers, and the NH Leadership Series disability advocacy training program.
This presence in the community allowed us to make new connections, share resources, get more people involved with the Council, and grow out email list!