What We Can’t See Still Matters—and Maybe More
Moms Need More Advocates
Despite the prevalence of maternal depression—up to 80 percent of mothers experience some range of symptoms—too many moms don’t get the help they need to heal. And when a mother’s health suffers, her child’s health often suffers too. As family members, community health workers, clinicians, and public health stakeholders, you are all key advocates for helping more mothers receive depression screenings and referrals. Register for a webinar on driving change at the community, state and federal level. And share this issue brief so that more people can learn about maternal depression and understand how they can help moms receive care.
Eliminate Childhood Trauma
This is how then 14-year-old Aliza Murphy described her mental health a year and a half after a young boy fired a gun in her middle school classroom. Aliza is not alone. Nearly half of American children are affected by childhood trauma, beginning right from the earliest moments of life and continuing through adolescence. Here, Aliza’s mother and NICHQ Project Director Colleen Murphy explains why health improvement initiatives need to seek systems that support all aspects of children’s health, even those that are invisible.
Building Blocks for Lifelong Mental Health
Strong early social and emotional development gives children the building blocks for lifelong mental health. Pediatric primary care can help children build this foundation by fostering social and emotional development in the same way it focuses on physical health and cognitive development. Interested in learning more?
- Read this report about promoting socioemotional development in primary care;
- Find out how 18 ambitious pediatric practices seek to do just that; and,
- Learn how pediatric health professionals can engage families in conversations about co-regulation, a critical component of social and emotional 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.
- Spread the word about children’s health initiatives, advocacy and the stories that inspire systems-level change. Share our monthly message on Facebook and Twitter.
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.
