Initiatives

Improved Hearing Screening and Intervention Services (IHSIS)

A series of collaborative improvement projects to increase the rate of documented follow-up and intervention services for infants with hearing loss.

Status: Complete

The multiple collaborative projects ran from 2010 to 2013.

Who: Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) offices representing 28 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in collaboration with parent partners, audiologists and other healthcare professionals and advocates.
Funder: This project was funded by the Health Resources and Service Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau.
Our Role: Facilitated Breakthrough Series learning collaboratives to apply quality improvement methodology to improve the systems of care for children with hearing loss.

What IHSIS Project Participants Say

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.

Irene Forsman, MS, RN-Project Funder

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.

Elizabeth Seeliger, AUD-Project Participant

At the beginning we thought that it'd be another project or another thing to do in our list of things we're supposed to do. But actually what I've learned is this is a better way to do things—a faster, better and effective way. You have to have a goal and objectives. When you work through the process we've been learning at NICHQ, everything is very efficient.

Marbely Barahona-Parent Partner

Prior to the working with NICHQ, we had had some broad areas of focus for our plan for the year, but really had no strategy or mechanism for testing whether a change that we implemented was an improvement. And we’d always implement statewide before knowing if the change was beneficial. I’ve seen other participants in NICHQ projects make a similar shift and now think about how things are possible instead of impossible.

Elizabeth Seeliger, AUD-Project Participant

NICHQ Webinar

Conversations to Improve Patient/Provider Relationships and Increase Appointment Attendance

June 29, 2021 from 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM (EDT)

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) affects approximately 100,000 Americans, predominantly those of African descent. This inherited blood disorder may cause acute pain episodes, infection, and other serious health problems that can damage every organ in the body.

Too often, people living with SCD and their families and caregivers miss critical healthcare appointments for a variety of reasons. According to a 2019 national study, a majority of patients reported missing a clinic appointment in the previous 12 months. In disseminating the study results, NICHQ interviewed patients, caregivers, and providers – and found that systemic and individual bias and racism contributed to poor patient/provider relationships, which in turn undermined solutions to appointment attendance problems.

While the relationship between patients or caregivers and their providers is not the main problem, improving that partnership is a big part of the solution. In this interactive session, our panelists will model conversations among providers, families, and advocates about reasons for and solutions to missed SCD healthcare appointments. Using webinar interaction tools and polls, webinar participants will examine, dissect, and discuss what works and what doesn’t in these conversations.

Webinar Objectives:

Identify three of the common reasons for missed appointments for people living with SCD and their families
Learn three conversation strategies to improve appointment attendance
Identify one immediate and one longer-term action to improve healthcare relationships

Audience:

SCD stakeholders: advocates and community-based organizations, health professionals, and service providers, people living with SCD and their families
Any caregiver, provider, or advocate in children’s healthcare who experiences frustration with missed appointments
Others who want to improve their conversations, their patient/provider relationships, and their appointment attendance

Panelists include:

Suzette Oyeku, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
TaLana Hughes, MPH, Executive Director of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of Illinois
Moderator: Judith Gooding, NICHQ Senior Advisor and Project Director for Disseminating Results: Missed Sickle Cell Disease Clinic Appointments and the Health Belief Model

Mental Health Awareness Month Social Media Toolkit

Mental Health Awareness Month is celebrated to fight stigma, educate the public, and advocate for policies that support people with mental illness. We’ve put together an online collection of social media posts and graphics to outline the significant role mental health plays in overall health and wellness and promote better mental health for children, families, and caregivers.

Addressing Early Childhood Health Equity in Communities and States

Early Childhood Health Equity (ECHE) work seeks to strengthen early childhood systems to support healthy child development and reduce health inequities and disparities that can have a lifelong impact. These briefs synthesize the recent work of the ECHE Landscape Project and highlight the themes and findings that emerged across the project activities.

National Infant Immunization Week 2021 Infographics

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children throughout the country have missed routine vaccinations. Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect infants, children, and teens from serious, highly contagious diseases, including measles, whooping cough and polio. During National Immunization Week, use these infographics to raise awareness about missed vaccinations and educate families on the importance of timely infant and child vaccinations.