Across the country, health and social service providers have had to find new ways to support children and families in the face of COVID-19. Home visiting services, pediatric well-child visits, prenatal care, and mental health appointments have largely had to transition from in-person appointments to visits virtually—either via phone or video. At the same time, COVID-19…
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted daily life across the country, with schools and childcare closed, routine medical care delayed, public transportation limited, and millions of jobs lost. These disruptions have affected communities where families already face significant threats to their health and well-being. In response, Baltimore Healthy Start, Inc., a federally funded program focused on…
For years, experts have called for a comprehensive system that links young children and families to needed health and social services at the community, state, and federal level. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that the need for that system is more urgent than ever. Children’s health and development is affected by a long list of…
When launching a public health program, one of the first things to do is conduct a needs assessment. A needs assessment helps you determine what needs to be accomplished to reach your project goals. This assessment of needs then informs a project’s overall plan and approaches by helping you identify targeted strategies and prioritize resources….
The 2020 census is in full swing and its results will have a major impact on children’s health efforts in the years to come. The census findings inform the appropriation of billions of dollars in federal funding across states and communities, which directly affects public health, housing, and early education programs. The census also determines…
Right from the beginning, fathers play a big role in their children’s health and development. Studies show that father involvement during the perinatal period and the first year of life leads to children who are more ready for school, have an advanced vocabulary and enhanced social skills, and are better able to regulate their emotions….
Quality improvement (QI) projects are centered on collaborative learning. Teams accelerate change by engaging in rapid-cycle testing, sharing what works, and then spreading and scaling those successes and lessons-learned across the collaborative. Facilitating collaboration can be challenging though. Teams are often based in different locations and balancing competing priorities, and funding constraints can make it…
In the U.S., a rare disease is defined as a condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people. Millions of Americans, many of them children, are living with a rare disease. To help show the impact and prevalence of rare diseases, we invited our network to share their stories. Read their submissions below and share your own…
When Precious Lee was a year old, she began to experience severe pain in one of her arms. Her mother, Tammy, knew something was wrong—Precious had stopped eating and wasn’t moving her arm at all—but the doctors at their local hospital didn’t share her concern. “My mom brought me to the hospital multiple times, but…
In the past decade, overall infant mortality rates have gone down. Yet, nationwide sleep-related infant death rates have stagnated, and the rate of accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed has actually increased. Changing these statistics requires more than teaching families about safe sleep guidelines; it requires concerted efforts to empower families as champions for their…