National Immunization Awareness Month

August is National Immunization Awareness Month! If you've ever wondered about the process vaccines go through to become recommended by the CDC, check out this infographic:

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/infographics/journey-of-child-vaccine.html

HMG Partners with Western Health Center

HMG Central Alabama Coordinator, Danna
with Super Why

Exciting things are happening in Central Alabama! Through our great partnership with Reach Out and Read-Alabama, Help Me Grow care coordinators are building relationships with pediatricians and engaging families in their medical home to demonstrate the impact reading can have on the developing brain and connect families to additional resources when needed. Today Western Health Center of the Jefferson County Department of Health, is hosting a Prescription for Summer Reading event in collaboration with Reach Out and Read-Alabama and Alabama Public Television’s effort to promote summer reading in pediatric practices and clinics around the state. In addition, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama and the Caring Foundation will be presenting the center with 1,800 books to be distributed to patients through the year. The event will highlight the importance of reading for preparing a child to enter school, and will showcase the services that all families at Western Health Center have access to during well-child visits. Well-child visits are more than just a time for vaccinations, but an opportunity to focus on all areas of a child’s development and ensure parents have the knowledge, resources, and tools to best support their child starting at birth. To accomplish this, Western Health Center will be collaborating with other organizations in the community to offer families the following services:

Reach Out and Read Statewide Coordinator, Polly
with Super Why

1. Ages & Stages Developmental Screening
2. Developmentally appropriate books and instructions for parents about reading daily and brain development through Reach Out and Read-Alabama
3. Registration for all children in Dolly Parton Imagination Library to receive additional books through age five
4. Care coordination and referral for needed developmental services through Help Me Grow Central Alabama

School readiness begins at birth and primary care offices have a unique opportunity to engage families early. The services offered at Western Health Center are a great example of progress being made towards ensuring every child in Alabama enters school prepared to learn.

How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime

There is now scientific research that supports a direct link between early childhood experiences and physical health through both behavioral and biological pathways. In the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study of over 17,000 participants, individuals who had experienced multiple adverse events were also more likely to suffer from many of the leading causes of death in the U.S., even when controlled for smoking, excessive drinking, or obesity. In a recent TED Talk, Nadine Burke Harris shares her experiences as a pediatrician and witnessing firsthand the detrimental effects childhood trauma can have on an individual’s health. In the video, Harris describes the evolution of her medical practice to viewing childhood trauma as a medical issue to better treat her patients and begin working towards preventing its lasting effects into adulthood. For more information on Nadine Burke Harris’s work and research, read her story here. 

Infant Healthy Development & Nurturing Relationships

We all know infants need parents, but what impact do caregivers have on social and emotional health? Check out this post from Too Small to Fail on infant mental health:

“When a baby cries for attention or smiles for the first time, he is communicating with the people around him so that they can help him meet his physical and emotional needs. But how his parents respond to those early communication attempts—as well as the security he feels from these early interactions—will help shape his mental health and social skills for years to come…”

Also, watch “Connecting with Babies: The Power of Parent/Child Interaction” here.

National Minority Health Month

Autism Awareness, Week of the Young Child, Child Abuse Prevention, AND Minority Health - April is a busy month! Here's what U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has to say on National Minority Health Month:

In April, we commemorate National Minority Health Month, a time to raise awareness about health disparities that persist among racial and ethnic minorities. This year’s theme - “Prevention is Power: Taking Action for Health Equity” - embodies the ambitious goal put forward by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to achieve “a nation free of disparities in health and health care.”

During Minority Health Month, we applaud the commitment of all of our federal, state, tribal, and local partners in our shared work to implement the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity. To learn more about National Minority Health Month and what HHS is doing to achieve health equity, please visit www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov.

To read Secretary Sebelius' full statement, click here.

Reframing the Mental Health Issue

Photo Credit

Dr. Paul Dworkin, of the Help Me Grow National Center, has updated his blog again! This month focuses on mental health...

In a January 2014 New York Times op-ed column, Nicholas Kristof invited readers to suggest topics that deserve more attention this year. He offered up the topic of mental health as a systematically neglected issue.

I am confident that few of us disagree with him. Kristof lamented the “code of silence” around the topic, noting that the media tends to cover only mental health issues that arise in the context of extreme situations, such as mass shootings, despite the weak link between mental illness and violence...

Follow this link to read more about the role Help Me Grow is playing in early childhood mental health.

Get Vaccinated!

Parents must make thousands of healthcare decisions for their children over the course of their lives. Immunizations are crucial to disease prevention and have multiple benefits. Consider the following statements from the Department of Health and Human Services:

- Immunizations can save a child’s life. Because of advances in medical science, children can be protected against more diseases than ever before. Some diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children, have been eliminated completely and others are close to extinction– primarily due to safe and effective vaccines.

- Vaccination is very safe and effective. Vaccines are only given to children after a long and careful review by scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals.

- Immunization protects others. Unfortunately, some babies are too young to be completely vaccinated and some people may not be able to receive certain vaccinations. To help keep them safe, it is important that children who are able to get vaccinated are fully immunized. This helps prevent the spread of these diseases to friends and loved ones.

- Vaccinations can save time and money. A child with a vaccine-preventable disease can be denied attendance at schools or child care facilities. In contrast, getting vaccinated against these diseases is a good investment and usually covered by insurance.

- Immunization protects future generations. Vaccines have reduced and, in some cases, eliminated many diseases that killed or severely disabled people just a few generations ago. If we continue vaccinating now, and vaccinating completely, parents in the future may be able to trust that some diseases of today will no longer be around to harm children in the future.

The Vaccines For Children (VFC) program is a federally funded program that provides vaccines at no cost to children from low-income families. To find out more about the VFC program, visit http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/index.html. To learn more about specific vaccines or other information about immunizations, visit www.vaccines.gov.

Pediatricians & Healthy Child Development

Charles Bruner, Ph.D., director of the Child and Family Policy Center and HMG National partner, has written a blog post for BUILDing Strong Foundations. In the post, he describes the critical role primary health care practitioners play in the development of young children. "Health Equity, the Triple Aim, and the First Two Years" also discusses the importance of connecting these professionals with other early childhood leaders. “The first two years of life ultimately are the most important ones to ensuring an individual’s health,” he writes. “During this time, the primary health care practitioner is the professional most likely to see and assess the child. She or he is best able also to identify and serve as first responder to conditions that jeopardize healthy development.” Read more here.

Social Needs are as Important as Medical

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published a report that supports the idea behind last week’s post. We discussed that poor health outcomes are often not solely rooted in poor health inputs, but that there are frequently social influences which heavily impact wellness. In “Health Care’s Blind Side” it becomes clear that physicians frequently encounter health problems that are caused by unmet social needs. In a survey of 1,000 American physicians:

- 85% say unmet social needs are directly leading to worse health
- 85% say patients’ social needs are as important to address as their medical conditions
- 80% say they are not confident in their capacity to address their patients’ social needs

The physicians reported that if they had the power to write prescriptions to address social needs, such prescriptions would represent 1 out of every 7 they write. This study clearly illustrates that we cannot fix America’s overwhelming health concerns such as obesity, heart disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes without also addressing social concerns that play a factor.

Health Care’s Blind Side demonstrates why programs like Help Me Grow can be vitally important to bridging the gap between health concerns and social needs. A Help Me Grow care coordinator can spend time identifying a child’s physical needs and make appropriate referrals, and can also get an idea of a family’s possible social needs and help make connections to relevant services. While a Help Me Grow care coordinator’s priority is to address a child’s needs, we know that typically cannot be accomplished separate from the needs of the family. Help Me Grow and other partners are working to progressively address concerns of the health care system’s blind side.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Early childhood obesity has been and continues to be an important issue (see our recent posts). We’ve received feedback that while improving nutrition and activity in children and adults is part of the solution, it may not be all there is to it. No one would argue that it’s easy to change a person’s lifestyle, but evidence points to the fact that we need to start earlier to better prevent obesity.

The CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study started in 1995 with 17,000 participants and these individuals continue to be studied over time. The study asked individuals about their childhood experiences and analyzed their health. Adverse Childhood Experiences include child abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. Ten different subcategories of traumatic stressors were identified and the results demonstrated that as an individual’s number of ACE increased, their risk for numerous health and lifestyle problems increased. One of the health problems that correlated with ACE is obesity.

CDC Pyramid Credit

The ACE Study shows us that while we’re sending messages to parents, community leaders, politicians, and health care providers to get moving and eat well, we must also consider the very basics of family life. Our anti-obesity measures and overall health strategies need to include ways to strengthen families and nurture very young children. No social or health problem is isolated, and we must consider the entire family if we wish to grow young children into healthy adults.

Improvement in Childhood Obesity - Alabama Unchanged

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "obesity rates among preschoolers are improving, but there is more work to be done to continue this downward trend. Among low-income preschoolers (ages 2-4 years) from 2008-2011:
- Obesity rates decreased slightly in 19 of 43 states and territories (including Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida).
- Obesity rates increased slightly in 3 of 43 states and territories (including Tennessee).
- Obesity rates did not change in 21 of 43 states and territories (including Alabama, Arkansas, and North Carolina).

The Facts:
- 1 in 8 (12%) preschoolers is obese.
- About 1 in 5 (19%) black children and 1 in 6 (16%) Hispanic children between the ages of 2 and 5 are obese.
- Obese children are more likely to be obese later in childhood and adolescence. In these older children and adolescents, obesity is associated with high cholesterol, high blood sugar, asthma, and mental health problems.
- Children who are overweight or obese as preschoolers are 5 times as likely as normal-weight children to be overweight or obese as adults."

Read Jim Marks' post about how we can continue making good progress. He comments, "Declining obesity rates among preschool-age children in programs like WIC are the result of a similar focus. The research released today did not pinpoint the exact causes of progress, but two factors likely had an impact:

- The 2008 overhaul of the WIC “food package”—Five years ago, WIC changed the mix of foods covered by the program. The changes encouraged families to buy more fruits and vegetables, with the goal of improving children’s health and nutrition. They increased allowances for whole grains and cereals while reducing reliance on high-fat dairy products. Grocery stores serving WIC moms and children changed their inventories to meet the new standards, benefiting not only WIC families but all members of the local community.

-Improved nutrition and reduced screen time in child care centers—More and more cities and states have required child care providers to improve the nutritional quality of foods and drinks served to young children. Just as important, major early education providers like the Y of the USA and Bright Horizons, have made major changes on their own, promoting physical activity, eliminating sugar-sweetened beverages, and reducing TV time for children in their care..."

Infographic Credit

Care Coordination for ALL Children

As we know, the earliest identification of developmental delays and concerns can lead to improved outcomes for children. The longer a delay goes unnoticed or untreated, the more deeply embedded it becomes in a child's makeup. This is true for ALL children.

Unfortunately, this CNN article highlights a disturbing trend:
Minority children with autism lack access to specialists

"African-American and Hispanic children are far less likely to be seen by specialists - for autism, but also other medical conditions - and also less likely to receive specialized medical tests than their white peers, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics."

Help Me Grow and our partners are committed to care coordination for ALL children. Read more to learn details of the study and remember that it's important to act early on concerns for a child's development.

Photo Credit

What's Up, Doc?

We mentioned before that HMG Central AL participated in a joint training for pediatricians interested in developmental screening with Alabama Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AL-AAP) and Reach Out and Read in Birmingham back in September. The training covered information about the need for more pediatricians to do developmental screening, how to incorporate developmental screening into a busy practice, how to use Help Me Grow to support children with challenges on their screenings or who need to be tracked for changes in their development.  There were seven practices trained which represented four out of five counties in the HMG CA footprint- Jefferson, Shelby, Blount, Walker and St. Clair. This was a great opportunity to expose local child health care providers to HMG, developmental screening and the process for AL-AAP's Quality Improvement project. The training allowed for all of us to get to know one another, and explain how it fits with Reach Out and Read. The training received excellent feedback. Training and outreach to child health care providers is an important focus of HMG CA and we will be focusing our efforts to train office staff and more practices.  We have already delivered Ages and Stages Questionnaire and begun to ask about who else would be a leader practice in developmental screening. 

Anyone in Jefferson, Blount, Shelby, St. Clair, or Walker counties can simply dial 2-1-1 and get connected to HMG. It's important that health care providers know what HMG is and how it works so they can connect children and families to the services they need with one simple phone call. 

ROR + HMG

Check out this newsletter that features Help Me Grow Alabama.  Reach Out and Read-Alabama, a program of the Alabama Chapter AAP is a key partner in our success in Central Alabama.

Reach Out and Read (ROR) is a national nonprofit organization that works with pediatricians and, like HMG, is expanding in pediatric practices and clinics. 

“Reach Out and Read started as a simple solution to an obvious problem: waiting rooms without books. Reading aloud was important for young children, and pediatricians had a special opportunity to reach their parents. It was a patently good idea. But if it had been nothing more than that, it would have withered away. Instead, ROR has grown, nurtured by the passionate and inspired efforts of many-educators, doctors, volunteers, parents, corporations, foundations and politicians.” -Robert Needlman, MD, ROR Co-founder

HMG-Central Alabama has connected with Reach Out and Read-Alabama to access pediatricians with a united message about early childhood development. Our streamlined partnership simplifies what we're both asking of health care providers- to prepare America’s youngest children to succeed in school; prescribing books and encouraging families to read together AND referring those families with children in need of developmental services to HMG.

Have you ever noticed Reach Out and Read materials in your waiting room?