The Help Me Grow National Team
National Center Staff
Paul Dworkin, MD, Director
Joanna Bogin, MS, Manager
Elsa E. Jones, MA, Administrator
Sara Sibley, BS, Program Coordinator
Technical Assistance Team
Marijane Carey, MSW, MPH
Kareena DuPlessis, BS
Rebecca Hernandez, EdM
Lisa Honigfeld, PhD
Marcia Hughes, PhD
Tanika Simpson, MSW
Amy Fine, MPH
National Center Staff
Paul Dworkin, MD, Director
Paul Dworkin is Executive Vice President for Community Health at Connecticut Children's Medical Center and professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. For the past 15 years, he served as physician-in-chief at Connecticut Children's and chair of the Department of Pediatrics of the UConn School of Medicine.
Dr. Dworkin's interests are at the interface among child development, child health services, and child health policy. He has authored more than 175 publications in the fields of developmental-behavioral pediatrics and general pediatrics.
Dr. Dworkin's honors include teaching awards, visiting professorships, and named lectureships. In 1988, he was Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford and also Visiting Scholar of Green College in Oxford. In 2003, Dr. Dworkin received the prestigious C. Anderson Aldrich Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in recognition of achievement in the field of child development. His vision led to the creation of Help Me Grow, a Connecticut statewide initiative to promote the early detection of children at risk for developmental and behavioral problems and their linkage to programs and services that is currently being replicated in 19 states with support from The Commonwealth Fund and the WK Kellogg Foundation. He was the editor of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics from 1997-2002. He serves on the board of directors for several organizations, including the Connecticut Children's Trust Fund and the Urban League of Greater Hartford, and was a member of the first entering class of the Academy of Distinguished Educators at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.
Dr. Dworkin received his bachelor's degree from Rutgers University and his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed a pediatric residency and fellowship in ambulatory pediatrics with a special emphasis on developmental and behavioral issues at Boston Children's Hospital. He recently completed study for a certificate in policy analysis from the University of North Dakota.
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Joanna Bogin, MS, Manager
Joanna Bogin is the manager for the Help Me Grow National Technical Assistance (National) Center. She directed the Connecticut Help Me Grow program since its inception as a state-funded program for eight years. As the National Center's manager, she is responsible for the overall operation of the program, including funding, budgeting, and staff supervision. She was co-director of The Commonwealth Fund grant entitled, "An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Statewide Intervention with Child Health Providers to Encourage Developmental Surveillance and Referral among Children at Risk for Developmental Delays." Ms. Bogin was co-editor with Dr. Paul Dworkin of the February 2006 supplement to the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, "Promoting Development through Child Health Services." Her article "Enhancing Developmental Services in Primary Care: The Help Me Grow Experience" discusses the potential of Connecticut's program to serve as a model for other states. Over the last 30 years, she has worked in a variety of settings as a child development specialist, special educator, and evaluator, promoting inclusion, conducting workshops, and providing technical assistance to federal, state, and local providers.
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Elsa E. Jones, MA, Administrator
Elsa Jones is a child development specialist with 25 years of broad-ranging experience in the field of early childhood development and education. As an independent consultant, Ms. Jones has led, managed, and supported over 200 programs and projects, resulting in improved early childhood programming and services for children and families. Her areas of specialization include birth to five development, intentional teaching, developmentally appropriate curriculum, assessment of child progress, NAEYC accreditation support, respecting and honoring diversity, and strengthening family partnerships.
Since 2004, Ms. Jones has worked at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving as a program associate for the Brighter Futures Initiative, providing training and technical assistance to five Hartford neighborhood-based family support centers and working with municipal and state agencies in designing and proposing school readiness and family support programs and policies. In December 2010, she joined the staff of the Help Me Grow National Center as the administrator.
Ms. Jones began her career as a combined Head Start teacher and center director in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is an experienced adjunct professor, Child Development Associate (CDA) adviser, reflective supervision mentor, early literacy coach, and federal Early Head Start/Head Start program reviewer. She served as an assistant researcher on two national, longitudinal early childhood studies for the Yale University Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy from 1995 to 2002; an assessment/intervention coordinator for the Columbia University Head Start Quality Research Center's five-year project on Using Assessment to Improve School Readiness and Head Start Program Quality from 2001 to 2006; a coach for Connecticut's State Education Resource Center projects, "Recognition and Response: The Connecticut Initiative" since 2006, and "Training Wheels" since 2008; and a trainer/coach for the CT Infant and Toddler Early Learning Guidelines.
Ms. Jones holds a BA degree in psychology from Wellesley College and an MA degree from the Tufts University Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development.
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Sara Sibley, BS, Program Coordinator
Sara Sibley is the program coordinator for the Help Me Grow National Center. She joined the staff in August 2010 and provides administrative, project, and research support. Previously, she was the state coordinator for the Easy Breathing asthma program, which has been replicated nationally. Her role involved overseeing a team of program coordinators for statewide implementation and dissemination of Easy Breathing. She worked with primary care clinicians to help them in the identification and management of asthma, including the national guidelines. She also assisted in the research of other asthma and obesity studies by facilitating focus groups and home visits that resulted in research used in supporting publications.
Ms. Sibley holds a BS degree in physiology and neurobiology from the University of Connecticut.
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Technical Assistance Team
Marijane Carey, MSW, MPH
Marijane Carey is the principal of Carey Consulting, a consulting firm specializing in public health and human services with a focus on women and children. She was involved in creating the Connecticut Help Me Grow system and has been serving since its inception as consultant to the project through the Connecticut Children's Trust Fund and United Way of Connecticut/Child Development Infoline, which serves as the access point for Help Me Grow. Her work at CDI includes training the care coordinators, who are the direct service staff, in working with families who call and collecting client-specific data from callers. She has also provided on-site consultation to Help Me Grow−Orange County, and this California-based program has implemented many of her recommendations. Her article "The Role of a Statewide Information and Referral (I&R) System in Enhancing the Access of Children and their Families to Developmental Programs and Services" was published in a February 2006 supplement to the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.
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Kareena DuPlessis, BS
Kareena DuPlessis is the director of the Child Development Infoline (CDI), a specialized call center of the United Way of Connecticut/2-1-1 system and the access point for the Help Me Grow program. She has grown the unit from serving as the single point of entry for the Connecticut Birth to Three system to an access point for several child-focused service systems, including Help Me Grow. This growth has been supported internally by cross-training an increased number of staff and externally by facilitating collaboration among the statewide partners and stakeholders. She has also been instrumental in the design of the Help Me Grow client tracking system for Connecticut.
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Rebecca Hernandez, EdM
Rebecca Hernandez is the program manager for Help Me Grow−Orange County, California. She began building the program's infrastructure and recruiting team members for Help Me Grow in September 2006. Prior to leading this effort, she held roles as an autism coordinator for Long Beach Unified School District, a manager for Early Intervention at Harbor Regional Center, and a child development specialist at Kaiser Permanente. Having worked in multiple human services sectors, Rebecca brings a wealth of experience to her role as program manager of Help Me Grow−Orange County.
Ms. Hernandez is an alumna of Stanford University, where she studied human biology with an emphasis in child development. Rebecca completed her graduate work at Wheelock College in Boston, where she earned her EdM.
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Lisa Honigfeld, PhD
Lisa Honigfeld is the Vice President for Health Initiatives at the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut (CHDI). She oversees efforts to strengthen primary and preventive health care for children in Connecticut. A sociologist by training, Dr. Honigfeld has a strong background in health services research and system development. Prior to joining CHDI, Dr. Honigfeld was the Associate Director for Health Services Research at ProHealth Physicians, Connecticut's largest private primary care network. Before coming to Connecticut, she directed the community medicine and pediatric practice activities at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Honigfeld received her PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1988. She holds a faculty appointment at the University of Connecticut and serves on several statewide committees to further medical home implementation throughout the state.
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Marcia Hughes, PhD
Marcia Hughes, assistant director at the Center for Social Research, is primarily responsible for the design and management of research and evaluation projects. She has been providing program development and evaluation services to nonprofit organizations, state agencies, and school systems for 20 years. Her work contributes to a range of interdisciplinary, multilevel collaboratives for creating positive social change at the local, national, and international levels. The focus of her current research and evaluation is on how to translate knowledge of effective practices to real world contexts and create the policy and organizational change necessary for successful implementation and impact.
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Tanika Simpson, MSW
Tanika Simpson is a mental health clinician specializing in early childhood behavioral health with over 10 years experience in the behavioral health and early childhood fields. She is currently providing parent-infant dyadic interventions to high-risk mothers through the Yale University Child Study Center's Minding the Baby program. She was previously a child development community liaison for Connecticut's Help Me Grow. She provides consultation to states in the community outreach component of the Help Me Grow system.
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Amy Fine, MPH
Amy Fine is senior adviser at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), where she helps shape its approach to integrating health, education, human services, and other family supports at the community level, focusing on preventive, developmentally oriented service systems for children and families. In this role, she contributes to the content of multiple CSSP initiatives.
With more than 25 years of experience working on issues related to maternal and child health, public health, and health safety net programs, Ms. Fine has served as a consultant to federal and state health agencies, private philanthropies, and national initiatives focused on improving results for children. Her previous work includes positions at the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Institute of Medicine, and the University of North Carolina's Child Health Outcomes Project. Most recently, she served as a consultant to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), drafting the current HRSA Strategic Plan, and she has worked closely with the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau to incorporate the life course model as an organizing framework for its strategic plan. At the state and community levels, her work has focused on the role of primary care pediatrics in linking children to developmental services and supports and the role of health and the health sector in comprehensive, place-based initiatives for young children. Other current work includes directing a national Communities of Practice Project on place-based initiatives for young children and providing consulting services to the Help Me Grow National Center.
Ms. Fine has degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Francisco, and she earned her master's of public health from the University of North Carolina.
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