about rfts
Right From The Start is a program of the Oregon Public Health Institute. The Oregon Public Health Institute serves as a vital non-profit component of Oregon’s public health infrastructure, nimbly responding to emerging public health issues that impact health in Oregon and beyond.
Right From The Start is a culturally specific program focusing on childcare providers in the African/African American/Black community. We provide training, technical assistance and access to resources to the childcare providers. Our core focus is health and nutrition, primarily for children 0-6, however, the information and assistance we provide can be applied to all ages of children in their care. We believe, by providing health and nutrition training to childcare owners and their staff it will have a lasting impact for the children in their care. Because it is difficult for providers to access our level of comprehensive professional development during traditional business hours, we work around providers hours of operation. Our classes are offered on Saturday's and technical assistance is on-site (temporarily online during the pandemic).
In 2018, after a few years of working with Black childcare providers we realized that we could deepen our work and strengthen existing and emerging childcare providers by adding additional areas of training and support. We engaged various community organizations and gathered input from providers to identify what strategies and goals would be most beneficial. Through our engagement we also learned that we needed include Black Traditional Health Workers and early life professionals in our trainings. While we have expanded our program to include Black Traditional Health Workers and early life professionals, our core focus and priority will always be Black childcare providers.
Our Vision
African/African-American/Black children ages 0-6 in the Portland Metropolitan area will attain their full health potential.
Our Mission
Right From The Start’s mission is to be the premiere provider of health education and technical support for African/African American/Black childcare providers, traditional health workers, and early life professionals to produce optimal health outcomes for African/African American/Black children ages 0-6 in the Portland Metropolitan area.
Our Approach
Children ages 0 – 6 generally spend several hours a day in the care of non-immediate family.By focusing our training and support of this vital workforce in the African/African American/Black community we aim to promote health equity for African/African American/Black children through a holistic approach of care.
This approach will set a foundation in the early years of life for long term positive health outcomes.
Through our work and active community visioning, support and input we have developed the following criteria and strategies.
65% or more of the children or families served by Black Childcare providers, Traditional Health Workers, and early life professionals must identify as African/African American/Black/Afro-Latinx/Afro-Caribbean.
Providing a holistic approach in eliminating health equity disparities, our program is based on the following five roots:
- Nutrition Education and Physical Activity
- Lactation Support
- Oral Health
- Social-Emotional and Mental Health
- Economic Development
our 5 ROOTS
Right From The Start is built upon five strategies that we call Roots. Our belief is that if you nourish the roots
of early health you will develop a foundation for children to grow into healthy and resilient adults.
Each root has specific goals that we work toward in our planning and implementation of trainings,
materials and resources.
Root 1
Nutrition Education and Physical Activity
- Increase indoor and outdoor physical activity
- Reduce childhood obesity and diet related illnesses
- Increase healthy food and beverage selections at child care and ECE sites
- Increase children’s active participation in nutrition and health education activities
Root 2
Lactation Support
- Support longer duration of breastfeeding
- Child care providers and other early life professionals learn how to support breastfeeding mothers
- Understanding the correlation of breastfeeding and healthier babies/toddlers
- Role of fathers in breastfeeding support and health outcomes
- Milk expression area for mothers
- Proper storage of breastmilk
Root 3
Oral Health
- Improve oral health by providing training and a toolkit for child care providers, Traditional Health Workers and early life professionals.
- Oral care for 0-6 and pregnant women
- Oral health materials and supplies for children
Root 4
Social-Emotional Intelligence/Mental Health Spectrum
- Suspension and expulsions of ages 0-6
- Self-care
- Mental health as a spectrum (children and professionals)
Root 5
Economic Development
- Ease income stressors
- Build wealth
- Sustainability of business
- Feel more supported
- Increase business skills
- Access to training opportunities
- Provide continuing education credits for maintaining certification/registration
Staff
Kyna L. Harris- MBA, Chw
Program Manager
We believe that it is important to reflect on the past and bring what was good into the present in order to make positive progress through the use of our collective knowledge. For this reason, we selected the Sankofa Adinkra to express this belief.
Sankofa is an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” Pronounced Sahn-Koh-Fah, it is derived from the words:
SAN - return
KO - go
FA - look, seek and take
The Right From The Start logo is the combination of the Sankofa bird and a heart. The interconnectedness of the Sankofa bird and heart represent our commitment to looking back and using our collective wisdom while moving forward to nurture and protect the future – our children.
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