America's Promise Alliance and ING Release National List of 100 Best Communities for Young People

The Georgia cities of Cumming and Macon, along with Troup County, are tops in our great state for young people.

/PRNewswire/ -- In a celebration of America's young people and the communities most dedicated to helping local youth graduate from high school, America's Promise Alliance (the Alliance) today announced its 2010 list of 100 Best Communities for Young People presented by ING. An interactive showcase of the 100 Best and their accomplishments can be found at www.americaspromise.org/100Best.

"The 100 Best Communities for Young People are taking bold and effective steps to help their youth graduate and lead healthy, productive lives," said Alma J. Powell, Chair, America's Promise Alliance. "Each community has proven that they are developing programs and implementing initiatives to provide young people with the essential resources they need to graduate from high school and succeed in college and a 21st century career."

The 100 Best competition is part of the Alliance's Grad Nation campaign, a 10-year initiative to mobilize all Americans to end the dropout crisis. This year, more than 350 communities in all 50 states and Washington, DC, were nominated for the 100 Best competition. The winners come from 37 states and 30 are first-time recipients of the honor. They were chosen by a distinguished panel of judges that included some of the nation's most well-known civic, business and nonprofit leaders such as: William Bell, president and CEO of Casey Family Programs; Fr. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Larry Naake, executive director, National Association of Counties; Jane Beshear, first lady of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and Dominique Dawes, Olympic gold medalist and youth advocate.

The 2010 winners will be highlighted at a ceremony in front of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC, with Alma Powell, Alliance President and CEO Marguerite Kondracke, and ING Foundation President Rhonda Mims. Winning communities will be pinpointed on an expansive ceremonial U.S. map.

Twilight star Kellan Lutz will make a special appearance at the event, assisting the Alliance and ING executives in revealing the list of 100 Best Communities and connecting with young people about the importance of staying in school.

"ING is committed to children's education and to the advancement of education initiatives that prepare our young people to graduate and have successful futures," said Mims. "Our support for 100 Best demonstrates our goal of honoring communities that produce real, measurable results for improving the lives of young people."

"100 Best is an essential building block of Grad Nation, an inspiring national movement that seeks to ensure every young person graduates," said Kondracke. "These winning communities are helping to build a generation of assertive, successful and dynamic young people that are the future of this country. Our ultimate hope is that 100 Best will inspire all communities across America to make a commitment to children, keep them in school and help them overcome the challenges that could otherwise determine their future."

First held in 2005, the 100 Best competition is open to all communities that make children and youth a priority, including small towns, large cities, counties and school districts. In addition to enhancing local educational opportunities, most winning communities help facilitate greater access to quality health care for young people, encourage youth civic engagement and supply developmental resources that create better places for young people to live and grow.

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Governor Perdue Issues State of Emergency for 17 Georgia Counties

Late this afternoon, after viewing storm damage in Douglas and Paulding counties from the air, Governor Sonny Perdue issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency in 17 counties affected by heavy rain and severe weather that passed through Georgia. The counties are Carroll, Catoosa, Chattooga, Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Crawford, DeKalb, Douglas, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Newton, Paulding, Rockdale, Stephens and Walker counties.

“Mary and I are saddened by the human cost the recent storms have wrought,” said Governor Sonny Perdue. “We are currently focused on rescuing victims of the storms targeting Georgia and preventing further damage. State personnel and equipment are being deployed to assist effected communities. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) is coordinating our response and managing the State Operations Center, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Environmental Protection Division (EPD) are deploying boats, high-water vehicles, and testing water. Other state agencies are deploying manpower and additional resources.”
State agency responses include:

Georgia Forestry Commission- Manpower and debris clearance, water tanker for Douglas County Hospital, water tender strike teams for structural fire support

Georgia State Patrol - Law enforcement for traffic control, road closures, helicopters

Department of Transportation - Road closure signs, bridge inspection, detours

Department of Human Services- Hospital coordination, shelter coordination, boil water advisories

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Division- Boats, high water vehicles, manpower, water rescue, dam inspections, haz mat spill assistance, water testing
Department of Agriculture- Large animal evacuations and pet sheltering

Georgia Emergency Management Agency - Response coordination, running State Operations Center, damage reports, public information, situation reports, resource coordination, field response

“The Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) will work with state agencies, utility companies and volunteer organizations to coordinate disaster response and recovery activities and serve our citizens,” said GEMA Director Charley English.

GEMA is the lead state agency for coordination of emergency and disaster response activities. For more emergency information, visit GEMA's Web site at www.gema.ga.gov. To learn how to prepare for disaster, visit www.ready.ga.gov.
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Initiative Helps Rural Georgia Hospitals Improve Performance

Seven rural Georgia hospitals will participate in a new initiative designed to help increase their capacity to serve patients, improve the quality of their services and reduce costs. The benefits will come from adopting performance improvement techniques that are already widely used in manufacturing industry.

The two-year demonstration project, to be led by the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute through a $349,000 grant from Healthcare Georgia Foundation, will help train hospital staff in “lean” techniques that identify waste in processes and find ways to eliminate it.

Georgia Tech has successfully used the approach with hospitals in Atlanta, Columbus, Newnan and Vidalia. Its “lean health care” training programs have been licensed for use nationwide by the American Hospital Association.

“We want to take the techniques that have proven to be so successful in large hospitals and use them in small, rural hospitals,” said Frank Mewborn, director of the Healthcare Performance Group in Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. “Rural hospitals typically don’t have the resources to hire outside consultants to help with performance improvement issues, so we very much appreciate the support from Healthcare Georgia Foundation to make this initiative possible.”

Georgia Tech project leaders will work with health care professionals at the participating hospitals to conduct lean assessments, teach basic lean concepts, develop value stream maps to analyze the flow of materials and information, and implement rapid process improvement techniques. Because the techniques rely on input from those closest to the processes being improved, each hospital will dedicate staff members to work with Georgia Tech.

“This is a substantial investment on the part of the hospitals because they must pull front-line staff from their normal responsibilities during the process improvement activities,” Mewborn noted. “Involvement of these key people is essential to the process, and it pays off long-term through better processes and buy-in from those who are on the front lines of providing patient care.”

Beyond direct process improvements, the initiative will also provide long-term benefits through senior leadership and hospital staff who have been trained in the lean techniques and who will share them with other departments and facilities. Success will be measured by improvements made during the process, and by the ability of each hospital to continue the process improvement efforts after the initiative’s conclusion.

Rural hospitals in Georgia face a financial crisis because their patients are less likely than those of metropolitan hospitals to have health insurance. At the same time, hospitals in underserved areas face other competitive disadvantages as they confront rising costs.

“A lot of rural hospitals are struggling to make payroll every month,” Mewborn noted. “They don’t have revenue opportunities from more profitable kinds of surgeries because they may not have a large enough market. They are meeting an essential need for health care in their areas, but their reimbursement rates tend to be low.”

Such facilities need to find sustainable ways to become more efficient, which is why Healthcare Georgia Foundation provided the grant to Georgia Tech.

“This grant award represents a tremendous opportunity to achieve greater efficiencies in health care quality and costs,” said Gary D. Nelson, president of the Foundation. “By taking this issue on from both clinical and operational perspectives, we can achieve sustainable efficiencies where they are most needed in our state.”

One of Georgia Tech’s first lean health care projects was with the emergency department at Meadows Regional Medical Center in Vidalia, Ga. As a result of the process improvement activities done there, the average time patients remained in the emergency department was reduced 44 percent and physicians were able to see more patients per hour – all while maintaining a 92 percent patient satisfaction rating.

Other hospital process improvement projects done by Georgia Tech have:

-Shortened the lead time and reduced errors in blood testing,
-Developed a time-saving system for managing intravenous pumps,
-Reduced errors and lead time for collecting and processing tissue samples,
-Increased capacity by reducing room down-times between patients,
-Boosted laboratory capacity and reduced errors through improved organization,
-Increased physician productivity through standardized work processes, and
-Streamlined pre-registration processes.

Hospitals that have agreed to participate in the program include Upson Regional Medical Center in Thomaston, Peach Regional Medical Center in Fort Valley, Monroe County Hospital in Forsyth, Morgan Memorial Hospital in Madison, Banks-Jackson-Commerce Hospital in Commerce, West Georgia Medical Center in LaGrange, and Hutcheson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe.

The projects are expected to be completed by June 2010.

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