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Integrated preventive health care for children
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Kids Get Care, an integrated preventive health care program, was funded from October 2001 to February 2007 by two HRSA Health Community Access Program grants. Kids Get Care (KGC) now serves as a model for the Children’s Health Initiative (CHI).
 Kids Get Care (KGC) is now the model currently being used by the Children’s Health Initiative (CHI). The goal of KGC was to ensure that children, regardless of insurance status, received early integrated preventive physical, oral, mental and developmental health services. To assure access to services, children need health care coverage but to assure they receive preventive services, they need a health care home KGC coordinated individual need with the service delivery system so that received integrated preventive health care .
The program also served pregnant women and women with young children in the areas of oral and mental health.
 Kids Get Care works with community organizations like Head Start and Family Support Centers to promote preventive health care for children. Presentations on health issues are available free of charge to organizations that work with children and their families. STARS hours are available.
Why integrated prevention?
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Prevention improves health and can save money
Although the mouth, mind and body are joined in the reality of each individual, treatment tends to be body part-specific: doctors treat the body, dentists treat teeth, and behavioral health specialists treat the mind. This program created the opportunities for doctors, dentists, and therapists to talk to each other about kids and treated them holistically.
Kids Get Care has received national accolades including recognition from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Learn more: Community-Based Oral Health Programs: Lessons from Three Innovative Models
 Implementing 15 additional Kids Get Care sites and providing fluoride varnishes, state-wide would cost approximately the same as the cost of avoidable hospitalizations and caries treatment for 2 year olds covered by Medicaid. Re-engineering of children's primary care delivery to provide greater support for preventive services improved well child visit rates while reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and cavity treatment.
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