A Spotlight on Rural Families
Connections Build Capacity
A young child in a rural community almost didn’t get the resources she needed to address a potentially life-threatening condition. In this article, NICHQ Chief Health Officer, Elizabeth Coté, MD, MPA, shares her story and then expands on the urgent need to build capacity in rural communities by coordinating systems and connecting families with the resources they need.
Tap Into Technology
For families in rural areas, doctors, support groups, counselors, and even friends and family are often many miles away. And when families feel isolated, their health can suffer. Telehealth opportunities—such as apps that connect patients with providers, virtual health events, and online communities—can help families not feel so alone.
Looking for inspiration? Read this article that shares advice on providing telesupport for breastfeeding mothers.
Stop Cycles of Addiction
Maternal opioid use has spiked in rural communities where health access is limited, treatment programs are too few, and cycles of addiction are common. Changing these numbers starts by leveraging every opportunity to get potential mothers help. In this recorded webinar, three experts share advice on making the most of these interactions, from prenatal care to building postpartum supports. Short on time? This article offers an overview of their advice.
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What People Are Saying
Our work to improve children’s vision and eye health in the U.S. has always centered on big ideas and massive systems shifts, thus we found the process of continuous quality improvement to be an exciting new way to tackle the challenges we face in our work.
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.
I am so impressed by the processes that the NICHQ staff use so well to enable teams in many different locations to learn and share, to practice QI processes, to support and inspire each other. NICHQ helps busy people find time to do important and difficult work that improves clinical practice, and to sustain the changes they themselves developed. I’m lucky to have been connected to NICHQ!
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!
It has been an honor to work with NICHQ as a Parent Faculty member. I admire how NICHQ continues to center their work around the people directly impacted by it: families and children. They actively work to include these voices throughout project implementation, ensuring that policies remain grounded in patient experiences and feedback. The expertise and professionalism of NICHQ staff has meant that I always feel supported, and confident that all stake holders are included in the process.
I feel like I am always learning when I am exposed to NICHQ. I am actually really going to miss it when this collaborative ends!
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.
I was very hesitant about quality improvement in the beginning but NICHQ reformed me. I have been working within our region and our state with health partners for years, but we have made more progress working with NICHQ through your learning process and collaboration than with any other group.
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.
