Challenge Awards

Baby’s First Test Challenge Awards 

The newborn screening community is one of great innovation. In light of this tradition, Baby’s First Test seeks to engage and inspire the community through the Challenge Awards.  Genetic Alliance will distribute several Awards up to $20,000 each for organizations to integrate Baby’s First Test into new or existing outreach, engagement, or educational efforts.  Each year, Genetic Alliance funds proposals that detail innovative solutions to challenges in the newborn screening system.  Genetic Alliance considers proposals submitted from nonprofit organizations, public health groups, research institutions, and private-sector companies. Below you can find information on past recipients and the projects that result from the Challenge Awards.

2012 Awardees:

Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center- This project will evaluate the Baby's First Test and March of Dimes video created in an earlier challenge award round as an intervention to increase parental awareness and follow-up on abnormal newborn screening results. 

University of Iowa State Hygenic Laboratory and School of Journalism and Mass Communication- This pair will work on creating and distributing an updated video detailing how the newborn bloodspot should be collected. The video will follow CLIA standards and answer many common questions that nurses and other health professionals have.

Children's National Medical Center- The Heart Smart Video Project team will be designing, producing, and disseminating one customized educational, web-based video for each of two specific target audiences – (1) healthcare providers (primarily nursing staff and physicians responsible for screening policies and procedures) and (2) families and advocates. The electronic video format allows for rapid and economical distribution, easy and convenient access, and standardized and accurate content.

Cora's Story and James' Project- This duo of dedicated moms are dedicated to increasing awareness of newborn screening, and in particular, pulse-oximetry. They plan to start a social media campaign encouraging other mom's to blog about the importance of newborn screening that will include a blogger ambassador program, twitter chat and webinars.

Chicago Center for Jewish Genetic Disorders- As part of the DNA Day 2012 celebration, the Center will be focusing on the creation and distribution of educational materials highlighting the new Baby’s First Test website and its use as a primary resource for health department nurses and their clients who participate in teen programs, expectant mother groups and the WIC program. In addition to the creation and distribution of materials supporting Baby's First Test, the Center will work cooperatively with Northwestern University’s genetic counseling program to schedule presentations for nurses at health departments in the Chicago area and around that state to further elaborate on the importance of newborn screening and the use of Baby’s First Test as a resource.

University of Pittsburgh- In order to increase the awareness of newborn screening in expectant mothers, this team will develop, integrate and evaluate a web-based application to promote education and increased awareness for newborn screening among pregnant patients in their first or second trimester.  Following this intervention, they will evaluate the impact of a newborn screening education kit for prenatal providers for newborn screening education among pregnant patients in their third trimester.

Past Recipients:

March of Dimes- As part of its ongoing “Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Babies” series, March of Dimes has developed and produced a 2.5 minute video vignette in English and Spanish depicting an obstetrician discussing newborn screening with her patient in a prenatal office visit setting. The video recently was released on YouTube as well as the March of Dimes and Baby’s First Test websites. March of Dimes and Genetic Alliance are coordinating social media activities to support the dissemination of the online videos. Next steps for this project include pressing and disseminating a DVD collection of prenatal education videos that includes the newborn screening video.

Hawaii Department of Health- During summer 2011, the Hawaii Genetics Program assessed online health information-seeking behaviors of attendees at the Hawaii Baby Expo (a gathering of diverse consumers interested in prenatal to preschool issues, products, and information) and patients at Hawaii Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) clinics. Surveys were completed via iPad or paper. Results suggest that the internet can be effectively used to disseminate accurate NBS information, particularly if the NBS Clearinghouse website is developed in a way that maximizes visitors. The Hawaii group then performed usability testing on Baby's First Test with another diverse population group.

New York Mid-Atlanatic Consortium- NYMAC facilitated a childbirth educator meeting in Baltimore, MD. Twenty-four doulas, nurse-midwives, and childbirth educators from all of the NYMAC states except Delaware attended the meeting. For the toolkit, the participants agreed that having a wide range of resources on newborn screening in one place that they could access would be helpful. About 2/3 of the participants agreed to participate in a pilot of these resources with their respective patient populations. Participants also agreed to continue working with NYMAC as a specific interest group focused on educating childbirth educators.

Association of Public Health Laboratories- APHL utilized social media to increase awareness of newborn screening. Specifically, they launched newborn screening twitter and Facebook accounts, held twitter chats, produced videos highlighting key figures in the newborn screening community, produced a brochure on newborn screening, and launched a website dedicated to furthering information on newborn screening. They will continue to promote newborn screening awareness by reaching out to their partners through social media connections and helping to facilitate production of a video detailing the laboratory process of newborn screening.