01/17/2025
It was good seeing those who could join us for our first virtual meeting of 2025 on January 16.
Following is a summary of our meeting:
Attendees: Patti, Sam, Hillary, Daphne, Susan
Attendees shared what parts of the task force they felt were most important right now. That included membership, engagement, offering education opportunities for members and the community, website presence and offering breastfeeding resources on the website to share with patients, providers and the community.
Hillary shared that the state has unrolled its plan for medicaid coverage for certified doula and lactation consultant services. She will share information as it becomes available and indicated that more information is likely to be shared at the state meeting coming up.
She encouraged reaching out to [email protected] to be added to the email list to get updates and information about the IL State Breastfeeding Task Force meetings. It was also mentioned that following the Urban League page could be helpful for more information as well.
The next state meeting is 1/21/2024 at 10 am. If anyone does not have the link to the virtual meeting please reach out to Audrie (email above) or Susan if you would like the link forwarded to you. Susan is unable to attend the virtual meeting. If you are able to attend the virtual meeting please indicate so in the comments.
Sam shared that the Central Illinois Task Force has upcoming education on April 11. There are options to attend virtually or in person in Peoria. A link to the information has been shared on the this page. If you plan on going or viewing feel free to indicate so in the comments.
The use of committees was discussed for planning for task force events so that meeting time is not consumed with small planning details for such events. This would allow committee members to go ahead with decision making for event details in a timely manner.
Offering a spring webinar was discussed again. It was discussed doing this in April to allow time for sufficient planning and attendees to arrange for time off work as necessary. I believe Daphne was going to check with Memorial Learning Center to check on dates that space was available as well as post possible webinar topics to see where the level of interest lies. Those interested in planning will be moving forward with this effort for offering this education in Springfield.
It was discussed changing frequency and week day of task force meetings. Fewer task force meetings while using committees for the planning details of upcoming events would allow the task force meetings to be higher level decisions such as types of events, how to use resources, membership, engagement, administrative topics, what's happening in our communities, etc. A survey will come out on the page to help us change to a week day that will suitable for more people. Those in attendance agreed that 6:30 pm is still a good time. It was also discussed having an in person meeting occasionally during the year.
It was decided that discussing the website will be one topic of discussion at the next meeting and hopefully in the comments below until then. Our volunteer website developer is now living outside of our region and will no longer be able to provide those services. We are thankful for what Traci did in developing a website that will be easier for the non-IT professional to use and maintain. We are looking for a volunteer or committee of volunteers interested in taking on this effort.
Plea@followers comments below for sharing any thoughts about the topics discussed at the meeting.
Happy 2025!!!
