US DHHS: Community Health Status Indicators Report

The US Department of Health and Human Services has  published the Community Health  Status Indicators Report, which contains health  indicator data on over 200 measures for every county in the United States.

Please visit http://communityhealth.hhs.gov/homepage.aspx

Article Explores how Barriers to Care for Vulnerable Children with Asthma Affect Primary Care Experience

Seid M. 2008. Barriers to care and primary care for vulnerable children with asthma. Pediatrics 122(5):994-1002. Abstract available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/994.

The author found that:

* The majority of the participants were of Hispanic ethnicity (83%), with 56.6% being monolingual Spanish speakers and 73.6% of mothers having less than a high-school education. In terms of access to care, 75.5% of the participants had health insurance.

* Even for children with health insurance, a regular source of care, and access to care when needed, barriers to care such as logistics, skills, health beliefs and knowledge, expectations about care, and marginalization interfered with families' abilities to make the most of the clinical encounter and primary care relationship.

* Differences in barriers to care had a greater impact on primary care experiences than did differences in either sociodemographic variables or indicators of access.

More information is available from the following MCH Library resource: Asthma in Children and Adolescents: Knowledge Path at http://www.mchlibrary.info/KnowledgePaths/kp_asthma.html

Helping Pediatric Practices Help Parents

Although parents often request information and support about healthy development and child-rearing techniques, studies indicate parents do not always receive this guidance. Tools to elicit parents' concerns, like identification of psychosocial risk factors, anticipatory guidance, and problem-focused counseling, are integral to good family care but challenging for busy practices to implement.

An innovative quality improvement collaborative in Vermont and North Carolina shows, however, that if provided assistance, physician practices can successfully implement systems to provide parents of young children with detailed guidance. As Peter A. Margolis, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues report in Assisting Primary Care Practices in Using Office Systems to Promote Early Childhood Development (Ambulatory Pediatrics, November/December), the 18 primary care practices participating in the 12-month intervention increased their number of care delivery systems by 50 percent, their developmental screening rate from 78 percent to 88 percent, and their psychosocial screening from 22 to 29 percent. Moreover, parents reported increased satisfaction with their child's care.

HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence

Medical Home Implementation Teleconference Series, March-June 2009

The American Academy of Pediatrics will be hosting a free teleconference series in March 2009 to provide child health professionals with practical strategies for implementing medical home in practice.  These informative calls will be led by nationally recognized experts with the goal of educating participants about the value of the family-centered primary care medical home for all children and youth, the availability of practical tools and resources, and will provide strategies for improving care and increasing patient/family satisfaction. For more information, please click here.

Register Now! American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2009 Future of Pediatrics Conference, February 27-March 1, 2009, Anaheim, CA

Quality Care for ALL Children

The Future of Pediatrics: Quality Care for ALL Children is an exciting AAP conference taking place February 27-March1, 2009 in Anaheim, CA. It will be a great opportunity for medical home advocates, community pediatricians, and other community health providers to network and learn from each other as well as from respected clinical and practice management faculty. 

Objectives: The Conference is Designed to:

• Expand your ability to diagnose and manage complex or difficult cases in areas such as pediatric dermatology, infectious disease, and developmental/behavioral pediatrics
• Demonstrate the ease and benefits of integrating community health and family-centered care into practice by providing successful strategies, resources, and networking opportunities
• Enhance your skills in providing effective systems-based care in a medical home
• Improve the quality and efficiency of pediatric practice by introducing new paradigms and approaches to practice management and proper application of coding guidelines
• Present current information, trends, and developments in caring for children with special health-care needs in a medical home
• Enhance your skills and effectiveness in providing health care to diverse populations
• Emphasize the value of a multidisciplinary approach to patient care
• Enable you to implement quality improvement strategies compatible with Maintenance of CertificationTM (MOC)
• Help you devise an action plan for producing effective change in your practice

Who Should Attend?

•  Pediatricians in general practice
• Community pediatricians
• Faculty in general and community pediatrics
• Young physicians
• Pediatric residents or medical students
• Family advocacy and maternal and child health leaders
• Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
• Other pediatric health care professionals

For more information and to register

Ahlaya Seminar in Pediatric Palliative Care: April 15-17, 2009, Minneapolis, MN

Children’s Institute for Pain and Palliative Care (CIPPC) is pleased to announce an educational program for pediatric palliative care. This three-day conference in Minneapolis will provide state-of-the-art information about comprehensive pediatric palliative care for the bedside practitioner.
The faculty will feature experienced clinicians who have taught nationally and internationally. Funded through a federal appropriation and designed for an interdisciplinary audience, the seminar will be
offered free of charge to eligible practitioners.* All disciplines are invited and preference is given to those who send an interdisciplinary team together. Travel arrangements will be the responsibility of those attending.

*Eligible practitioners are those who are currently working in the U.S., and are professionals working in the areas of hospice care, pediatric home care, or pediatric care, and who plan to care for
children facing life-limiting diseases in their practice. Due to space limitations, we must request that no more than four members from a single organization plan to attend.

For further information, or to request registration materials, call (612) 813-6450 or e-mail CIPPC@childrensmn.org. Children’s Institute for Pain and Palliative Care (CIPPC) is an
initiative of the Pain and Palliative care program of Children’s Hospitals and Clinics.

www.childrensmn.org/painandpalliativecare

Alliance for Pediatric Quality: The Improve First Webinar Series

March 5, 2009
Pediatrix Medical Group -- A National Business Model for Quality Improvement in NICU Care

April 23, 2009
Trailblazer Improvement Collaborative for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease

May 19, 2009
Improving Performance in Practice Primary Care - Asthma Collaboratives

June 9, 2009
Cincinnati Children's Business Case for Quality -- Quality as a Cost Management Strategy