Here, NICHQ CEO Scott D. Berns shares a statement on racial inequality and injustice and the health of America’s children.
Promoting Children’s Health During COVID-19
Support Children with Sickle Cell Disease
A rare blood disorder, sickle cell disease (SCD) affects approximately 100,00 people in the U.S., many of them children. Because those with SCD have weakened immune systems and often experience heart and lung comorbidities, they may be at an increased risk of complications from COVID-19. Here, find links to related resources to support children with SCD, including advice for families and providers and a registry for tracking COVID-19 cases among those living with SCD.
Create Coordinated Systems
When different health and social services work in silos, it disrupts continuity in care and families miss out on vital supports and services. The pandemic has intensified this problem because families need those supports more urgently than ever. In response, states and communities have pioneered solutions that illustrate the great potential for transformative, accelerated systems change. Learn more in this article.
Go Virtual
During COVID-19, conducting services like pediatric wellness checks and home visits over the phone or through a video call has become the norm. Interested in making these visits as effective as possible? In this article, licensed counselor Jana Glass, LPC, MAC, PMH-C, BC-TMH, shares strategies for helping families feel comfortable and supported when receiving virtual services. (hint: the article include a new infographic sharing seven key takeaways.)
Get Inspired By Ideas on the Ground
Despite the challenges brought by the pandemic, health and social service providers across the country are finding innovative ways to improve children’s health outcomes. Get inspired by stories from two communities:
- Because the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities, communities in Ohio are developing a comprehensive plan to support at-risk families. Find out what might work in your community.
- Baltimore Healthy Start has launched a multi-pronged approach to support the families they serve—many of whom live in poverty and struggle to meet their basic needs. See what ideas you can tap.
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
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.
Through the Infant Mortality CoIIN, NICHQ has found effective ways to engage all states around six areas of effort to reduce infant mortality and improve birth outcomes. With the support of NICHQ staff and expert consultants, state maternal child health leaders are learning to use traditional quality improvement and innovative approaches to maximize the leadership roles, and to use a health equity lens in this work.
Working with NICHQ has been a very rewarding experience … A partnership with families has been a hallmark of what the Maternal and Child Health Bureau has done for years, but NICHQ really demonstrated how important those partnerships are.
In over 21 years of caring for my son with complex congenital heart defects plus my 20 years working in healthcare quality improvement and my 6 plus years as a patient advocate, I've never known anyone to embrace closing the gaps between patients and healthcare institutions or doctors, as much as the people from NICHQ.
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.
NICHQ’s role in coordinating these grantees working on improving sickle cell care and making an agenda that at least tries to push for improved care for all of these patients is very important. The role has been not been very well-served and NICHQ, in my mind, has the experience and staff expertise to bring to sickle cell disease the sort of rigor in methods development and analysis of outcomes to move the bar of caring for people with sickle cell disease several notches up.
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.
