[269] March of Dimes Grant Will Improve Health Of Young Women In Tennessee

Jan. 26, 2010

CONTACT: Cynthia Chafin, M.Ed., CHES – Tennessee Folic Acid Council Coordinator and project director, MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services, 615-847-3081 or cchafin@mtsu.edu.
Dr. Jo Edwards, 615-898-2905
Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919 or ttozer@mtsu.edu

MARCH OF DIMES GRANT WILL IMPROVE HEALTH OF YOUNG WOMEN IN TENNESSEE

MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services will be Collaborative Partner

NASHVILLE—The March of Dimes Tennessee Chapter has awarded a grant to the Tennessee Folic Acid Council to support, “Did u know what’s g%d 4 u is good 4 ur future baby?”, a campaign utilizing text messaging and Web technology to educate college women on important lifestyle issues.
The project is geared toward young women attending Middle Tennessee State University who come from all parts of the state. They will learn about the importance of folic acid and birth-defects prevention, not smoking and abstaining from alcohol, as well as maintaining a healthy lifestyle to reduce the risk of developing diabetes, obesity and other chronic health conditions. Peer-directed educational activities will include a text-messaging campaign and other online educational tools.
“We will use the March of Dimes grant as seed money to meet our objective of providing young women from all areas of the state of Tennessee with education on healthy lifestyles, which may impact them today as well as tomorrow as future parents,” said Cindy Chafin, TFAC Coordinator and project director for MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services.
“We want to use innovative methods of reaching these young women that fit with the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation for pre-conceptual health. We are grateful to those volunteers who support the March of Dimes by participation in events like March for Babies and who donate in other ways. That participation and those donations make this grant possible,” Chafin added.
The Tennessee Folic Acid Council is a partnership between the Tennessee Chapter of the March of Dimes and the Tennessee Department of Health committed to the prevention of birth defects. Through a variety of activities, the council provides education and advocacy regarding the benefits of folic acid to the general public, health- care providers and local policymakers so that the incidence of preventable neural-tube defects is reduced., Chafin explained.
MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services has been a previous grant recipient for folic-acid education and has been involved in several activities of the Tennessee Folic Acid Council.
“The Center for Health and Human Services is delighted to be a continuing partner in helping to promote healthy lifestyles in young women and to reduce birth defects through its projects with the March of Dimes,” noted Dr. Jo Edwards, MTSU Adams Chair of Excellence in Health Care Services and director of the university’s Center for Health and Human Services.
For more information about folic acid and National Folic Acid Awareness Week or about MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services, visit www.folicacidinfo.org, www.folicacidtn.com or MTSU’s Center for Health and Human Services’ Web site at http://mtsu.edu/~achcs/.
Founded in 1938, the March of Dimes is a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. For more information, visit www.marchofdimes.com or its Spanish language Web site at http://nacersano.org.


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With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.