Minutes for WHRN Tools and Resources Working Group Conference Call, October 23, 2015

Participants:  Jean Abraham, Claire Allen, Lisa Brosseau, Nkenge Jones-Jack, Enid Chung Roemer, Melanie Studer

Absent:             Kristen Hammerback, Jeff Harris, Laura Linnan, Meg Pomerantz

1. Welcome– Jean welcomed the group.

2. Approval of the minutes and action items from our last call – The minutes for the previous call were approved by consensus.

3. Project Updates
   • Broker/agent project (Jean)
     • Jean thanked Claire and others at University of Washington for providing comments on the instrument. Jean sent out a revised version incorporating these comments earlier today (10/23). The goal for today’s discussion is to walk through the revised document. Now that the WHRN is in year 2, it is important to try to stay on track with this project.
   • Recruitment
     • Reminder that last month the group discussed every center trying to connect with their local or state NAHU agency.
     • Enid: Reached out both to Maryland and Baltimore NAHU agencies via e-mail. No response yet.  Will be following up with a phone call. Need to try to determine the appropriate person to talk to.
     • Claire: Similar results. Reached out to NAHU agencies. Learned that one organization no longer exists. Kristen Hammerback is reaching out to the other organization.
     • Jean: Similar results. No response yet. Planning to follow-up with a phone call.
     • Lisa:  Has not tried to contact her local NAHU chapters yet. Lisa is trying to hire someone (Michelle) to help with this project (interview scheduled for next week). She (Michelle) has some experience working with brokers.
     • Melanie: Asked if UNC should also be contacting local/state chapters. Yes. Melanie will follow-up with Laura.
     • Jean mentioned that the lack of response is concerning and somewhat surprising. It may be a timing issue (open enrollment). Potential options: (a) reach out to national chapter of NAHU, (b) reach out to individual broker contacts, (c) use network to identify individuals who have contacts with brokers, (d) reach out to Chamber of Commerce (Jean) to see if they have members who could help.
     • Next steps:
       • (PRIORITY) All centers continue to try to make contact with NAHU agencies (follow-up phone calls). Send updates to Jean via e-mail by Friday 11/6. Will assess status and develop plan for moving forward within next couple of weeks. Can’t wait until next monthly call.
   • Interview Guide
     • Concerns about some questions that may be perceived as ‘offensive’.  May need to ask brokers/agents about these questions during pilot testing. Consider including these questions at the end of the interview.
     • Goal is for interview to take no longer than 30-45 minutes. Some concerns that current list of questions could be too long. Consider creating short survey for easy questions and focusing interview on questions where more detailed information is desired/needed.
     • Also need to continue to think about ordering of questions, potential duplication, prioritization of questions, changing some questions to probes.
     • Next steps:
       • Jean will continue to work on the questions.
   • IRB
     • Jean is preparing the IRB application. Some question as to whether other centers will also need to submit applications to their own IRBs. At a minimum, Jean can share her application and approval letter with other centers (once available).
     • Next steps:
       • Jean preparing IRB application and will obtain guidance/confirm need for other centers to also submit IRB applications to their own centers.
   • Dartmouth CDC ScoreCard Data (Jean)
     • Jean reached out to two contacts. No response.
   • Review of Organizational Health Assessments (Melanie)
     • Enid explained that the JH team is starting a new project with the CDC. The goal of the project is to recommend potential updates to the CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard. As part of this project they will be reviewing the literature/evidence and conducting a scan of existing assessments to identify topics/areas not currently covered by the CDC scorecard (i.e. potential holes). This is an internal project for the CDC. There are no plans to publish a separate paper on organizational health assessments. There is no significant overlap with the review Melanie is currently working on and no real need to have a follow-up call with Ron and team.
     • Melanie reviewed the current aims for the review and discussed progress thus far.
     • The following suggestions were offered:
       1. Focus on what is novel/unique about each tool
       2. Table that summarizes strengths and weaknesses of each tool would be helpful
       3. Consider how each tool addresses worker well-being
       4. Focus on the intended audience (employers; brokers; agents; consultants) and their needs; what information would be most valuable to them; they want help figuring out which tool to use
       5. WHRN members can help facilitate access to tools and feedback reports, as needed
     • Melanie is going to focus on five tools for now to help keep the workload manageable. Additional tools can be added to the review after the aims/structure of the paper are finalized.

4. Future Calls – Meg will distribute a Doodle poll to arrange the next call.

5. Action Items
   • Broker/Agent project: (PRIORITY) All centers continue to try to make contact with NAHU agencies (follow-up phone calls). Send updates to Jean via e-mail by Friday 11/6. Jean will then assess status and develop plan for moving forward with recruitment.
   • Broker/Agent project: Jean will continue to work on interview questions.
   • Broker/Agent project: Jean will continue to work on IRB application and will obtain guidance/confirm need for other centers to also submit IRB applications to their own centers.
   • Org Health Assessment project: Melanie will continue to work on the paper.

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