Find information about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and children's health here.
Making the Most of the Digital Health Revolution
Endless Possibilities
With digital health, the potential for innovation is endless. Below are three snapshots of what’s possible:
- Facebook creates community: Peer support can help more Black mothers breastfeed, but historic and systemic inequities sometimes make finding that support difficult. Learn how Black Lactation Circle (BLaC) of Central Ohio is leveraging Facebook to share support and resources with hundreds of women of color.
- Telehealth makes miles mean less: From providing breastfeeding support to mothers in rural areas to helping providers better support patients with rare diseases, telelearning and telehealth make it easier for families in remote areas to receive optimal care.
- QI initiatives capitalize on virtual learning opportunities: Thanks to remote learning technologies, quality improvement (QI) team members can join in-person learning sessions virtually and engage fully in learning activities. Find tips for supporting remote participants here.
Raising the Bar on QI Collaboration
Quality improvement (QI) projects are centered on collaborative learning. But with teams in different locations often balancing competing priorities, facilitating collaboration can be challenging. This is where virtual platforms come into play. The digital space has unmatched potential for engendering collaboration that not only transcends geographic barriers, but also enhances and simplifies QI processes. In this article, learn how an enhanced virtual platform is helping improvement teams collaborate, innovate, and make change.
The One Awareness Building Resource You Can't Ignore
In the past decade, the number of Americans using social media has nearly doubled, with approximately 70 percent of Americans spending time on a social platform. Social media is prevalent across different racial/ethnic groups and all income levels and has continued to rise across all age groups. And, importantly, organizations can create an account on many platforms free of charge. Interested in learning how to make the most of this powerful platform?
Read this article on using social media to raise awareness about infant safe sleep (hint: the strategies shared are applicable for many children’s health topics).
We're Grateful
This month’s Digital Health campaign is supported by Agaric, a web development agency that has partnered with NICHQ to design our website and the NICHQ Collaboratory. As a cooperative focused on empowering others in the digital space, Agaric shares NICHQ’s commitment to using digital tools to help all children and families reach their optimal health.
Be a Children's Health Change Agent
Like you, we have a shared passion for improving the health of every child in every state across the country. Join us in our mission. Take action to make a difference for children now and in the decades to come:
- Donate. Give a gift that supports NICHQ’s initiatives that touch millions of children’s lives. Every dollar raised benefits the health and well-being of children.
- Sign up. Join our network of thousands of other subscribers. We deliver resources, articles and webinars right to your inbox so that we can drive change in children’s health outcomes together.
What People Are Saying
NICHQ fosters a collaborative process, not a dictatorial process. You allow us to build success in our community and not try to push any one strategy or model on us. You guide, collaborate and share, but you don’t steer.
Working with NICHQ, I have been able to assist communities all over New York State with their breastfeeding care efforts. The NICHQ staff is experienced, organized and thorough, ensuring each interpersonal interaction is maximally engaging and productive. Because of the way change efforts are organized, I find myself learning new procedural and educational techniques, and even more about my own field! Thanks to NICHQ for including me on this interesting ride.
For me, NICHQ is uniquely positioned to support complex, system-based efforts to improve child health and healthcare, locally and on a national scale. NICHQ helped my teams succeed by supporting collaboration, information management, and continuous learning. With NICHQ's help, the whole of our work was much greater than the sum of each of our individual efforts!
Participation in this project has uncovered new desires for me personally, and for our hospital and community. We are making progress in the little and big things, and changing the way a baby is welcomed into the world step by step. I am so thankful for the Best Fed Beginnings team, the opportunity to gain insight from other hospitals, and the chance to serve with my local hospital. With the drive of this collaborative, we can change the health of our world, one baby at a time.
I'm passionate about early identification and connection to services and supports for children and families because we know acting early makes a difference. When I learned that the ECCS CoIIN leverages collaboration, innovation and quality improvement methods to improve early childhood systems, I was thrilled to get involved. There is a great focus on parent engagement too, so I was really happy to join the team and be a part of this great work.
Being involved with NICHQ has been a career-changing and life-altering experience in many ways. Quality improvement methodology is not additive to my work, it influences how I do my daily work.
Participating in NICHQ's Improving Children's Vision project has facilitated a rich opportunity to pursue robust quality improvement strategies to enhance early childhood vision health in Wyoming. [We] appreciate the expertise provided by the leadership team and the opportunity to share ideas and feedback with other states in the Collaboratory.
I want to tell you how much I have enjoyed and learned from all of you at NICHQ. You are enthusiastic, supportive, smart and FUN. You have talked me off the ledge many times when I wanted to quit. You are true leaders and passionate about what you do.
Being a parent partner for NICHQ ...has been a pure honor. I would encourage anyone that has the opportunity to work on a NICHQ project to take advantage of it. Working with them has opened many doors for me in the medical field.
NICHQ has really supported our work by formalizing a process to do PDSA cycles, report and track how our progress is doing. As a data person, CoLab has been really instrumental in terms of gathering the data and tracking it over time.
