The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
(Vol. 19 No. 23)
IN THIS ISSUE...
WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - EXTENSION AND APPLIED RESEARCH
Each year K-State Research and Extension has a delegation to
attend the Joint Council of Extension Professional’s (JCEP) Public Issues Leadership Development (PILD)
Conference in Washington DC. This year
the conference is April 22-24. Purpose
of the conference is for professional development in public issues and
advocacy.
The K-State delegation includes representatives from each of
the state Extension professional associations and individuals from the State
Extension Advisory Council (SEAC). This
year we will have the following representatives attending the conference:
Extension professional association representatives:
Chuck Otte, Geary County, Epsilon Sigma Phi
Nancy Honig, Stevens County, Kansas Extension Association of
Family and Consumer Sciences
Anna Muir, Phillips-Rooks District, Kansas Association of
Extension 4-H Agents
Chris Petty, Graham County, Kansas Association of County
Agricultural Agents
Our SEAC representatives:
Ray Bartholomew, Hutchinson, Reno County
Dean Fitzsimmons, Cunningham, Pratt County
Kyle Fulton, Spearville, Ford County
Wally Wolfe, Abilene, Dickinson County
Additional K-Staters:
Barbara Stone, 4-H Youth Development, representing Extension
Administration
Trudy Rice, PRIDE Programs, chair of the PILD national
planning committee Pam Van Horn, 4-H Youth Development, representing the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents
Barry Flinchbaugh, Professor of Agriculture Economics,
keynote speaker
Daryl Buchholz, Associate Director, speaker on behalf of
national Cooperative Extension
On the final day, the delegation will make visits to each Kansas
Senate and Representative office to talk with staffers on how Extension is
making a difference in Kansas and the importance of the federal funding in
helping to make that happen. While
there they will leave copies of a “Making a Difference” one page flyers as
examples of strong local programs. You can
take a look at that flyer by clicking on this link.
PILD is a great way to learn about advocacy and leadership
for Cooperative Extension nationally. I
am pleased that we have a strong tradition to give both our Extension
professionals and our volunteer board leaders this kind of leadership
development opportunity each year. I
know this group will represent us very well.
Have a great week! --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
ANNOUNCING KANSAS HEALTH FOUNDATION PROFESSOR OF COMMUNITY HEALTH
We are pleased to welcome our new
Kansas Health Foundation Professor of Community Health, Dr. Roberta Riportella. She has joined the faculty in the School of
Family Studies and Human Services, College of Human Ecology, where she will be
a resource not only for our Family and Consumer Sciences Extension programming,
but for all KSRE faculty who seek to educate individuals, families, businesses
and communities about health and health care.
Roberta comes to us from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
where she was a Professor in the School of Human Ecology funded in large part
by Wisconsin’s Cooperative Extension system to be a health policy specialist
for that university. Through her twenty
years with UW she had been involved with many state and community initiatives
focused on creating health in communities, including a TV program on creating
health for women, work on community needs assessment, recruitment and retention
of primary care providers, hospital
transitions to critical access hospitals, and the like.
A major role was as Project Director of a state based
coalition outreach project called Covering Kids and Families (CKF). CKF was originally a Robert Wood Johnson
project funded to make sure that every state would work to maximize enrollment
of their children in their States’ Children’s Insurance Programs called
BadgerCare in Wisconsin. Over the past
10 years it grew beyond RWJ funding and solidified its base in Wisconsin as a
premier place for education around BadgerCare, a model school-based outreach
program. Much of that work involved
training school personnel in the intricacies of BadgerCare and its importance
for children. County Extension faculty have
often been major partners in the development and then dissemination of this
work.
As the Affordable Care Act came into being in March 2010,
Roberta and CKF, partnering closely with Wisconsin county based Extension
faculty, began a major educational campaign to get community groups prepared
for the reality of health reform. It is
this work that she most directly brings to Kansas. Roberta hopes to work with local faculty to
help them prepare their communities through public issues education and to
prepare consumers for choices they will need to make for new insurance plans
come October 2013 using materials already being developed in Kansas and
nationally within Extension. Fall 2011 Roberta spent a sabbatical semester with
NIFA to reinvigorate a partnership between NIFA and the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Services. That partnership
culminated in a Medicare educational program disseminated nationally through
Extension program when Part D, the Medicare prescription drug plan, came into
being. Roberta sensed that this new ACA health
reform created another perfect storm of needs and opportunities for these two agencies
to partner. Roberta has been working at a national level to inform Extension
colleagues about the importance of ACA as a public issues educational
opportunity, speaking with regional groups, hosting national webinars and the
like.
Roberta’s disciplinary home is sociology, more specifically,
medical sociology, and she considers herself a public health researcher. Her
master’s and Ph.D. degrees are from the sociology department at UW
Madison. After her graduate work she
taught in medical schools at SUNY Stony Brook and UNC Chapel Hill. At the latter she also taught and began
research into access to health care for vulnerable families in the School of
Public Health. It is that research line
that she took to UW and brought her most directly to leadership for Covering
Kids and Families. --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
KARL CLASS XI TRIP TO PERU #4
Day three was not only a big day for me because I was chair, as previously mentioned, it was my first time to ride in a moto-taxi. Before I talk about transportation, however, I’d like to tell you about the afternoon, after lunch. We visited a farm in El Carmen, Centro Poblado Las Huacas. The farms were operated by men who were greatly assisted by their wives. Bruno Mendoza Peves, and his wife, Dalila Dowayre Torre-Bzanca were our guides to their farm. Bruno, an Afro-Peruvian farmer, raised avocados and corn mostly. There were also bananas and maté growing on the farm. Bruno was experimenting with growing corn and other vegetables together in the same row. He had great ideas about farming, and he also asked our experts if they had any suggestions. His greatest challenge was marketing. He knew that his avocados would be ready in about two weeks, but he did not have a place for them to go at the moment. That worried some of my KARL classmates who are producers.
The best time came when we moved into the village of Centro Poblado Las Huacas. Half of the group went to look at Bruno’s brother’s farm plots while some of us stayed behind in the village square sitting in the shade with the local “mothers”. The ladies had good stories to tell, and they had great fun learning from us. I showed them a small photo album I had made to illustrate who I am. It had pictures of me in my tribal regalia, pictures of my parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren. We had such a nice time together, and when the men returned with the rest of my classmates, we sealed our friendships with locally produced Bergoña del Viejito (Old Burgundy). Now, look at this picture that Jack Lindquist took (as he sang, “We are fam-i-ly…”).
I’m the one on the far left. When the picture is in the correct size, you can see the looks on the women’s faces. They are priceless. I think the picture illustrates the importance of the KARL’s international trips. If we can make connections with one another on an international basis, we break down barriers of misunderstanding. The better we understand one another, the more likely we will exchange ideas and can live in peace and harmony.
Transportation – There are a lot of people to move around in cities like Lima, Tarapoto, and Cusco. It was not unusual to see whole, young families on a Honda 125 or a 150 cc scooter. I saw a family of five on a little Honda motorcycle. Dad was driving with a 2-year old on the tank, and mom sandwiched two other little ones between her and dad. They looked happy as they headed to their destination with the freedom that one feels when one has a vehicle for the first time.
After a day of visiting farms, we headed to Norky’s, Peru’s answer to Denny’s. Since it was about 1.5 miles from the hotel, we either had to walk, take a cab, or ride a “moto-taxi”. It’s a little scooter with a rigid cab built around it, the trimovil. It runs on about a half cylinder. The most common moto-taxi seen in Tarapoto, in the jungle region, was the auto-rickshaw, which is a converted motorcycle with the carriage being pulled behind. Tarapoto has the most moto-taxis per person than any city in Peru. It costs us 3 Soles to ride to Norky’s. That’s about $1 U.S. I wondered if driving laws in Peru were based on a dare. I did film it if you’re interested. Next week, I will talk about visiting the jungle region, Tarapoto. --Debra Bolton dbolton@ksu.edu
MARIE'S PICKS . . .
This week my pick is a success story from Barbara Ames, Wildcat District:
Regarding the “Are You Ready?” lesson on being
prepared for disasters/emergencies, several weeks after participating in the
lesson a lady commented, “Your
lesson really woke me up. I have started
a household inventory and have begun working on several of the other
preparedness things you talked about.”
According to the participants' surveys we received, all reported the program increased their awareness of how to prepare for
emergencies and almost 100% selected at
least one to two preparedness measures to begin working on such as
preparing a list of prescriptions, assembling a “grab & go kit,” developing
a family communication plan, and getting important papers together in a place
where they are readily accessible. These results are important
because simple preparedness steps in advance can minimize the financial
and stress impact of a disaster and make a big difference in ensuring
the safety and well-being of individuals, families, property, and
belongings. --Marie Blythe mblythe@ksu.edu
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