INTRODUCTION & SUMMATION OF CURRENT SITUATION:

The Central Harlem Healthy Start Program has just completed the staffing up process and we are three months behind in meeting our HRSA client recruitment deliverables. While HRSA generally understands that new programs need extra time to get their internal systems in place and hire staff, our contract calls for the program to service 200 clients a year for four years.

Our tasks as a program of managers, case managers, health educators and outreach workers is to quickly define our market, select the “communities” that make up each target audience and then develop several tactics to tell the Healthy Start story to motivate a variety of client types to enroll into our program.

A burning platform is sitting underneath the Healthy Start program. The only way that we can put out the fire is to pull together and locate the clients who are interested and who are eligible for our program. The outreach planning meeting that took place on January 24th 2002 was just the first step to conceptualizing a plan and then carrying it out.

Colleagues the women who need our services are out there. This plan that we collectively developed will help us reach the objective. However, every tactic, every assignment must be carried out with fervor, a keen understanding of our strategy and a heightened respect for our people.

MISSION:

The primary mission of this plan is to recruit another 150 clients by May 31st 2002. Our objective is to convince a mix of women of childbearing age that the Healthy Start Program fits their current pregnancy, women and child health needs. By March 31st 2002, we will have recruited 100 new clients into the program by following the strategy and actions steps outlined below.

STRATEGY STATEMENT:

To achieve our mission, we must carry out several outreach and marketing tactics to make our target audiences aware of the CHHS Program and the services we provide to pregnant and parenting women. Simply stated, our strategy is multileveled. When a women walks down the street in Harlem she will either be approached by a CHHS Outreach Worker with a flyer making an offer for services or she will see a flyer/poster on the bulletin board on her block. When she opens her mail, a direct mail letter communicating the health benefits of the Healthy Start program will be presented.

When she checks out at Pathmark, a copy of the program flyer will be placed in her groceries. When Jane exits the laundry mat, visits the neighborhood clinic or when she exits the hair shop, she will interface with the CHHS program. No one tactic will achieve our mission. A combination of well thought out tactics, targeted to specific audiences that satisfies the varied needs of these women defines the art and science of this important work. In a few words our strategy calls for placing a public health fishnet around one third of the women who live in Central Harlem.

AUDIENCE DEFINITIONS:

Our marketing plan has two audience types we will influence to achieve our mission stated above. The first audience type is transitional organizations that interact in some basic way with women of child bearing age. They might be the local TANF office, hospitals, clinics, housing developments, homeless shelters and churches where our target audience congregates.

Our purpose with these entities is to gain access to these facilities to outstation CHHS staff that will recruit women of childbearing age into our program. Marketing/outreach operatives’ main role is to sell the purpose of the Healthy Start program to administrative leaders, front line and intake staff at these facilities so that they become marketers for NMPP. CHHS staff will pick a day to outstation themselves at these locations after NMPP management or line staff has secured access.

The second audience type is what we call in the business our target audience. These are women between the ages of 12 to 44 who have a high probability of getting pregnant and could utilize Healthy Start services. However, we are not attempting to reach all women living in Harlem who are of childbearing age.

We are seeking to influence the high-risk population of women who make up the infant mortality and low birth weight statistics in the Harlem community. We are not looking for soccer moms or corporate women. Our targets are poor and working class women living in Harlem. Before the marketing assignment begins one has to know who your customers are in a very detailed manner. We have segmented the market of pregnant women in Harlem using the following categories:

TEENS:

The teen pregnancy rate in Harlem is one of the highest in New York City. We are searching for teenage women between the age of 12 to 19, who have engaged in sexual behavior in the past and could get pregnant in the future. We are also looking for teens that are currently pregnant. We are also interested in the young adult population of women 19 to 24.

WOMEN OVER 35

Our research over the last three years have found that a growing number of women 35 and over have decided to have a child. Our data reveals that a growing number of these women reside in zip code 10027. Our research tells us that these women have jobs and live a middle-income lifestyle and have health insurance.

These are women who put off having a child for a number of years and state that they are ready to make this important decision. How we engage, persuade and secure these customers will be very different than the other market segments outlined in this section of the plan. Please remember, this segment can be described as high-risk due to the age of the customer and the varied number of medical complications that could take place having a child over 35 years of age.

SOUTH HARLEM POPULATION

The New York Times published an article on March 16th 2000 about a new and growing community in Central Harlem called South Harlem. Members of this community live between 110th Street and West 124th Street, Morningside and Lenox Avenue.

The area has a growing number of residents from various countries in West Africa. From 1990 to 1996, the West African population increased from 44,000 to 84,000 according to Andrew Beveridge, a professor at Queens College who specializes in demographics.

SUBSTANCE ABUSING PREGNANT WOMEN

While the crack and heroin epidemics have passed for now there is still hundreds of pregnant substance abusing women living in Harlem. We must find them in the homeless shelters, housing developments, TANF offices and clinics in our community.

HOMELESS WOMEN

There are thousands of homeless women who live in Harlem. They suffer from not having a steady income, domestic violence and the general housing shortage that is a problem throughout NYC. NMPP does business with a number of homeless shelters in Harlem.

These women vary in age and they are defined by the fact that they don’t have permanent housing for themselves or their children. A sizable portion of these homeless women are pregnant during their stay at the homeless shelter.

EX-OFFENDER WOMEN/PROJECT RETURN RIKERS

There are several women who reside in Harlem who are returning to this community from the prison system. Many of these women have the same characteristics of women in the categories outlined above. However, women in prison or returning from prison have some unique social, economic and health care needs.

The prenatal care women receive in prison is minuscule. Women living in prison or coming home from prison who are pregnant have a number of health care problems that make them a special population that the Healthy Start staff can address.

OUTREACH PLAN TACTICS:

Now that we have defined our mission, strategy, and audience segments, it is time to get down to the various outreach tactics that we plan to deploy to bring about change in the current situation described above. We will deploy a variety of tactics reaching all target populations, thus serving the community. For each tactic, a performance objective will be communicated that will guide the work. Then more specific action steps will be outlined that will provide direct leadership to the Healthy Start outreach and case management staff to get the job done.

1. SOUTH HARLEM SATURATION WORK

Performance Objective: By May 31, 2002, 35 pregnant and parenting women will be enrolled into the Central Harlem Healthy Start Program from South Harlem. To achieve the objective above, the following tasks will be carried out.

Action Steps:

Coordinator: Mr. Baptiste

1. By February 1, 2002, all Healthy Start staff will study the New York Times South Harlem article to get a better understanding of the unique aspects of this community.

2. By January 30th 2002, a West African flyer will be developed and mass produced for distribution in the West African community of South Harlem. (Maxime)

3. By February 6th 2002, Maxime will meet with members of the African Services Committee to review the flyer, make edits based on their recommendations and mass produce the flyer by February 9th 2002.

4. By February 28th 2002, Kathleen and Maxime will have organized a staff cultural competence workshop to learn about the basic folkways and cultural nuances of the various West African communities. Ms. Francis will utilize the Healthy Start training budget line if resources are needed to make this happen before February 28th 2002.

5. By February 5th Mario Drummonds will develop several color maps of South Harlem highlighting churches, hair salons, clinics and hospitals in the area. These maps will be used by the Marketing Team to geographically target the locations where we will deliver our Healthy Start public health message. Within three weeks, Mr. Drummonds will organize a training session on how to use the computer mapping software and resident database for the Marketing Team.

6. Starting on February 7th 2002, Irma, Maxime, and Henry will spend three hours completing flyer distribution at five African hair shops along 125th street. The shop down the block on 127th street will be hit also. The work will be characterized by locating and interacting with the owner of the shop and explaining to her the significance of the Healthy Start program.

Based on building that relationship, team members will begin to hand flyers to each woman in the shop. A request will be made to allow two flyers to be posted in the window of each shop. If the relationship is cultivated, the owner will allow for a brief presentation about Healthy Start to shop patrons. If a pregnant woman is sited, a special pitch will be made to her to ascertain whether she has a medical home. She will be told about the case management and health education services of Healthy Start. If there is an interest, a screening form will be completed and plans for a home or office visit will be made. Colleagues, there are hundreds of hair salons in Harlem. This tactic can be utilized not only with African hair braiding shops but also with all salons in the targeted zip codes. Colleagues, this is not a rush gig. Operators should spend anywhere between 15 minutes to forty five minutes in each shop telling the Healthy Start story. Every Thursday from now until May 31, 2002 is Beauty Shop Marketing Day. Three to four hours should be dedicated to this work every Thursday. If it is completed correctly, it should produce customers for our program. Possibly, a mass beauty shop flyer could be constructed to drive this work!

7. Starting on February 4th 2002, Maxime, Irma and Henry will seek out the coffee shop on West 116th Street that is owned by Maimouna Ndiaye mentioned in the NY Times South Harlem article. The team will attempt to build a working relationship with Maimouna and sell the Healthy Start story.

8. They should leave her shop with a commitment that she would allow us to set up a flyer stand and place a copy of the flyer in the window of her shop. Every Monday from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 the team will visit this and other businesses in the area to talk up the Healthy Start program and locate pregnant and parenting women.

9. On Monday, February 11, 2002, Maxime and Henry will visit the Gabaron Barber Shop on West 116th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenue. They will educate the men in the shop about Healthy Start and the New York City Male Involvement Consortium and the pending Job Fair 2002 that will take place on June 14th 2002. They will send a convincing message of why men should participate in the birthing process and encourage the men to enroll their pregnant women into the Healthy Start Program. They will spice this presentation by selling the benefits of Harlem Works as a further incentive to enroll their wives. The team will make use of the color maps of South Harlem to locate other social and business locations that serve as access points to find pregnant and parenting women in South Harlem.

10. On Monday, February 18th 2002, Maxime will make contact with Willie Kathryn Suggs a real estate agent on West 145th Street and Ramona Smith who has a rental management company that controls 600 apartments and 18 storefronts in the South Harlem area. Maxime, you will have to look up the address of Ramona Smith. Your task, if you decide to accept it, is to cultivate a relationship with these two women so that they can give you a database of West African families living in the apartments they broker. If they won’t give up the database, Maxime will attempt to leave flyers so they could send them to the tenants. According to the South Harlem article, West Africans constitute sixty percent of these agent’s tenants. Maxime will also attempt to secure the names and addresses of the 18 storefronts in the area rented by Ms. Smith. Once secured, Maxime will go to each storefront, cultivate a relationship with the owner and pitch the Healthy Start message.

11. On Monday, February 25th 2002, Maxime, Henry and Mario will travel to Joe Pep Dry Cleaners on 116th Street. A number of Healthy Start bags and flyers will be left at this place of business. Healthy Start flyers will be left in the window and the team will attempt to obtain a general census of the Joe Pep’s customer base. A flyer stand will be set up and new flyers will be placed at this location every two weeks.

12. Every Monday for three hours up until May 31, 2002, Maxime will lead a team into the South Harlem area utilizing the color maps and visit business establishments, ascertain their customer base and decide whether to verbally and or through printed word pitch the Healthy Start message. Please keep in mind our target audiences as you go about this work. Move away from sites where our target audiences are not present. The team will saturate the site with our public health message at business sites that match the demographics of our targeted customer bases.

13. On March 4th 2002, Henry and Maxime will gain entry into Renaissance Plaza, a 240-unit subsidized co-op on Lenox Avenue and 116th street. If the team fails to gain entry through the co-op board or building management, Mr. Drummonds will gain entry through his resident database system. He will track Mr. Timothy Hopewell, a recent newlywed who moved into this development.

14. Once one apartment is located, the database will reveal the names, addresses and phone numbers of the other residents in the building. Maxime will develop a direct mail letter to the residents selling the benefits of the Healthy Start program. The letter will be sent to all residents by March 11th 2002. By March 15th 2002, phone follow up work will commence four days after the letters are mailed by Irma and Maxime.

2 SISTERLINK COALITION COORDINATION

Performance Objective:

By May 31, 2002, the Sisterlink coalition will refer 25 clients to the CHHS Program:

Action Steps:

Coordinator: Irma Mclean

1. Irma and Kathleen will set up a meeting with Kim Whitfield to communicate the performance objective and talk about means to achieve this objective on February 13th 2002.
2. Irma will obtain a copy of the outreach schedule for the months of February, March, April and May 2002 from Kim by February 8th 2002. Only six hours per month will be dedicated to Sisterlink outreach activities.
3. During Sisterlink outreach activities, Irma, Wilsey, Yenny, Seville, Gasmelba will carry Healthy Start materials and secure clients.
4. Outreach activities will be decided on based on how well they match the audience demographics outlined above.
5. Focused work within the Saint Nicholas Housing Development and the Hamilton Women’s Shelter will characterize Sisterlink activities.
6. The entire Healthy Start staff will participate in the consumer kick-off event scheduled in either March, April or May organized by the Sisterlink Coalition.
7. Irma and Kathleen will work closely with the Sisterlink Department of Health contact, Ms. Karen Owes who recently referred five cases to the Healthy Start program and twenty cases to the Sisterlink Coalition. Once a week, Ms. Owes will be contacted to see if she has some new referrals.
8. The outreach team will attend all monthly Sisterlink general meetings and special events.
9. The bottom line is this; Sisterlink must refer two clients a week to the Healthy Start program to achieve the performance objective above.

10. Irma and Kathleen will meet once a week with Maryam to see how many phone intakes have come in from the Sisterlink hotline based on the radio and print advertising. The objective of this contact is to persuade Maryam to refer new cases to Healthy Start.
11. Kathleen will meet with Ms. Gibbs once a week to secure potential Healthy Start clients due to the fact that her program has achieved its contract census level. According to Ms. Gibbs on 1/31/2002, her preventive program is turning clients away. There outreach strategy of building a base in the Saint Nicholas Housing Development has worked!

3. STREET OUTREACH/DOOR-TO-DOOR WORK

Performance Objective: By May 31, 2002, 25 clients will enroll into the Healthy Start program as a result of the action steps carried out below.

Action Steps:

Coordinator of Outreach & Health Education

1. By February 11th 2002, Mr. Drummonds will have produced color maps of the five zip code areas where street outreach can take place. The outreach team will decide on housing developments in each zip code area to complete door to door work in.
2. The first targeted housing complex will be 40, 70, and 90 Lenox Avenue. Every Tuesday starting on February 12th 2002, Yenny, Seville, Irma, Wilsey and Kathleen will complete door-to-door outreach seeking clients for Healthy Start.
3. Starting on February 4th 2002, Irma and Ms. Francis will go to the Lenox Avenue site to meet with building management to obtain approval to enter the building to complete door to door work on February 12th 2002.
4. The team will secure one name, address and phone number of a resident in the building (by February 4th 2002) so that Mr. Drummonds can secure the names and addresses and phone numbers of all the other residents in the buildings.
5. Mr. Drummonds will develop a data base of all building residents so that a direct mail letter to all residents will be sent by February 7th 2002. Ms. Francis will develop the direct mail letter.
6. The style of work while inside the building is not just to leave flyers under each door but to ring the bell, engage the tenant, cultivate a relationship, sell the benefits of the Healthy Start program and then leave a flyer so that the customer can follow up.
7. Tape flyers on each floor of the building to build exposure for the program. 9
8. Attempt to locate the tenant leadership so that the outreach team can be invited to a general tenant meeting to sell the program by March 14th 2002.
9. Outreach team should be ready for doors to be closed in their face due to the people not trusting them. Continue to go back to each building to attempt face to face communications until the people trust you. They eventual will once they sense that you are real!
10. By February 18th 2002, Irma and Yenny will begin phone follow up work to apartments where no tenant answered the door. They will alert each tenant that teams of Healthy Start workers had knocked on their door and they would be back the following Tuesday.
11. Irma and Yenny will develop a database of all contacts made in each building. Basic demographic information will be collected along with the number of children in the household, health care and social service needs of each household.
12. Outreach team members will flood the surrounding blocks around the housing development leaving flyers in stores, laundry mats and hair salons and supermarkets surrounding the Lenox Avenue development. This tactic is important so that building residents will be placed in a marketing fishnet where the Healthy Start message is present wherever they go in the community.

13. The outreach team should spend about a month and a half in each building to complete this mass work. Before leaving a building the outreach team should have cultivated a tenant on each floor of the building who will be a Pregnancy Watcher. The best candidates are elderly residents who know the business of their neighbors. They will contact Irma or Ms. Francis if they have information on a pregnant woman during the first trimester. If the woman is pregnant during the first trimester, the pregnancy watcher will receive two $10.00 Pathmark gift certificates. If the pregnant woman is in her second or third trimester, the pregnancy watcher will receive one $10.00 certificate.

14. The outreach team will make strategic use of Healthy Start incentives to get their foot in the door and establish relationships with tenants. If more incentives are needed, Ms. Francis will work with Ms. Claxton to make the order. Sisterlink Coalition incentives should also be accessed to achieve the marketing objectives.

15. By March 15th 2002, the outreach team should complete their work in the Lenox Avenue development. Pre-planning activities should be followed as outlined above as the team selects another housing development in Harlem to complete door-to-door work in. The team should mass produce enough flyers, screening forms and incentives to complete each assignment during the planning stage. New targets can be Manhattanville Development, Rangel Houses, Polo Grounds, etc.

4. OUTSTATION ACTIVITIES:

Performance Objective: By May 31, 2002- 80 women will be enrolled into the Healthy Start program as a result of the work outlined below.

Action Steps:

Coordinator: Irma

1. Kathleen and Irma will develop a listing of sites where outstation activity will take place. Harlem Hospital outpatient clinics, Harlem Motor Vehicles, St. Luke’s Hospital outpatient clinics, local TANF centers, etc. by February 13th 2002.

2. Starting on February 13th 2002, the following Healthy Start staff will complete outstation work at the above sites every Wednesday until May 31, 2002. They are Irma, Seville, Gasmelba and Wilsey.

3. Each staff member will set up shop at a different location for half a day. Ms. Francis will determine where each worker will be assigned. Each staff member will work from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and then report back to Ms. Francis on the results of their work by submitting a written report on all outreach activities. Ms. Francis will develop an instrument to streamline the reporting process. The above staff must follow the above protocol! Staff will spend time at a site from two to six weeks depending on the number of hits that come in. Ms. Francis will determine whether a staff member will move to another facility.

4. Ms. Francis and eventually the Coordinator of Outreach and Health Education will make site visits to check up on the work.

5. Before a worker is assigned, Ms. Francis and Mr. Drummonds will secure entry by talking with the site administrator to secure a table/chair and possibly a phone by February 8th 2002.

6. Each outstation worker will carry enough flyers and incentives to complete their work each Wednesday.

7. Pre-planning work should also educate staff at the clinic about the purpose of the Healthy Start program, the services we provide and the benefits our services will deliver for site customers. All outreach staff should have a keen understanding of why the site would want to have you out-stationed at their facility.

8. The style of work for this phase of our marketing program is as follows:
*All target customers entering the facility should receive a flyer.
*All pregnant women should be approached to talk about Healthy Start.
*Staff should attempt to cultivate good relationships with the intake staff at each
facility so that they can refer eligible customers to the outstation worker.
*Flyers should be posted after checking with leadership throughout the facility.
*A table should be set up with other NMPP materials to promote MCH services.

*Each workers should have screening and intake forms because some customers
might be ready to join Healthy Start immediately.
*Staff should take opportunities to give mini-group presentations to potential
customers sitting in the waiting room starting first from a conversational base
and then moving quickly to an informal presentation about the benefits of
Healthy Start.
*Team members should strategically use incentives to promote the program and
meet some of the concrete needs of potential patients,
*If a VCR is available, team members can use the NMPP video as another tool to
sell the program. Ms. Francis will check with each site administrator to obtain
approval to showcase our domestic violence and general NMPP videos.
*As the weather heats up, tabling work should be shifted to outdoor venues.

MEDIA WORK: By May 31st 2002, twenty-five pregnant women will enroll into the Healthy Start program as a result of the media work outlined below.

Action Steps:

Coordinator: Mario Drummonds

1. By Monday February 25th 2002, Mario Drummonds will develop a public service announcement and press release that will be sent to his 180 media contacts about the opening of the Central Harlem Healthy Start Program.

2. Starting on March 1, 2002, Mr. Drummonds will begin phone follow up activities to secure stories about the program.

3. By March 30th 2002, Mr. Drummonds will secure a feature story about Healthy Start in the New York Amsterdam News.

4. By April 15th 2002, staff will appear on two radio talk shows that match the demographics of our target audiences to speak about Healthy Start.

5. Mr. Drummonds will write a Spring Healthy Start advertising campaign targeting ethnic radio and newspapers and spend between two to three thousand dollars positioning the Healthy Start message. For each paid minute, Mr. Drummonds will attempt to secure free public service time from each radio station.

6. Mr. Drummonds will attempt to develop stories with the New York Times, Daily News and New York Post positioning the benefits of Healthy Start and the need for the Mayor to continue to support community-based efforts to end infant mortality during the focus on the Mayor’s budget from February 15th 2002 to June 30th 2002.

7. Healthy Start senior staff will continue to participate at press conferences and legislative meetings organized by the Manhattan Public Health Consortium and the Citywide Coalition to End Infant Mortality.

8. Mario will attempt to secure time on Lisa Evers Street Soldiers radio program to talk about Healthy Start by June 1, 2002.

9. Attempts will be made to secure time and stories with the local West African, Dominican and Puerto Rican press.

5. TEENS FORCE WORK:

Performance Objective: By May 31, 2002, twenty teens will be recruited into the Central Harlem Healthy Start program as a result of the action steps outlined below.

Action Steps:

Coordinator: Henry Ampofo

1. Attracting teens to our various MCH programs has historically been a hard task to complete. This plan will make another attempt to focus on understanding their health care, sexuality and adult transition needs in order to recruit and serve them better.

2. Henry will organize either a focus group of about nine to twelve teens or a larger teen speak out event where teens can share their opinions on health and sex issues. The Marketing Team will develop a better understanding of their needs and what would trigger them to enter our Healthy Start program by March 20th 2002.

3. Data from the focus group will be used to develop rehearsed scripts when talking with teens and a mass flyer will be distributed where teens socialize by April 1, 2002. (Mario, Henry)

4. Henry and Wilsey will set up a meeting with the youth ministry at the Refuge Temple Church in Harlem to talk with the teens about career goals, health care issues, health insurance and relationships by April 15th 2002. Attempts should be made at all youth ministry meetings to be invited back to other social and religious events the youth are planning into the summer months. We should also have flyers (Male Involvement Job Fair!) of other NMPP programs and events that might interest this teen base.

5. A similar meeting will be set up with the Youth Minister at five other Harlem-based institutional and storefront churches. The flyer at all of the above sessions will be reviewed and critiqued before mass produced.

6. Four thousand flyers will be printed and the outreach team will begin distributing the flyer at venues throughout Harlem where teens congregate. They will distribute flyers at the local pizza parlors, high schools, MacDonald’s, game rooms, and the Apollo Theatre.

7. Teen incentives will be secured based on the recommendations of the teens that attend the focus group or speak out event. These incentives will be used strategically to encourage teens to talk about health care issues.

8. Flyers and contacts will be made by Henry and Stephanie at the Children’s Aide Society’s community school and center on 118th street, the Minisink Youth Organization, the Valley Youth Organization, Baby College, and the Harlem YMCA.

9. The nature of the work here is to seek out pregnant and parenting teens as well as teens that have not engaged in sexual behavior to join the consortium, enroll into Healthy Start, or just answer their questions about adult topics.

10. Stephanie and Henry will gain entry at Rice High School by March 1, 2002 to speak with and cultivate relationships with the student leadership, guidance department, parent organization and the administration. The Healthy Start story should be told to all of these constituencies and pregnant and parenting teenagers should be recruited.

11. As a result of Stephanie’s work at P911, the High School for pregnant and parenting teens over the next five months, nine teenagers will be recruited into the Healthy Start program. Stephanie will position herself as a health education resource for the student body and an outside voice to talk to that can be trusted by the young ladies in this program.

12. Henry, Stephanie and Irma will work the New York City Housing Authority Community Center listing. Thousands of teens live in the housing developments outlined on this listing. Batches of teen Healthy Start flyers should be sent to each one of these center directors. The Teen Force Team will set up meetings with each center director starting on March 9th 2002 to find out what teen services are being delivered.

Summary:

I strongly believe that we as unified staff will be able to get this job done. The current situation as described early in this report will not linger for long. If we as creative human beings concentrate our collective intelligence on a goal, no force can block us in achieving that goal!

We still have to develop a more detailed plan to work with the churches in Harlem to promote our program. We will use our influence on the Board of the Community Health Alliance to realize our objectives with this work. On February 12th 2002, the Executive Director of this entity will meet with me to review budgets, program plans and staffing up proposals. I will attempt to get Healthy Start high on his agenda.

If everyone carries out the tasks as outlined in this plan, we will witness measurable increases in the number of women who enter the Healthy Start program. As I revealed to you on January 25, 2002, this program is now in your hands colleagues. You are the experts!

If you follow the specifics outlined in this plan, we will have caught up to the contract amount of clients served, improved our relationship with HRSA in Washington and kept our commitment to the community to serve with all our hearts mothers and babies in Harlem.

Please place personality and conflict by the wayside. We simply do not have much time to achieve our mission. I will be monitoring the implementation of this plan as well as the results on a weekly basis. Full steam ahead in serving our people! Building a Social Movement; Fostering Hope; Investing in Ideas… Returning Results!