O F F I C E F O R C O M M U N I T Y C H I L D H E A L T H

Promoting Children’s Optimal Healthy Development

Promoting Optimal Healthy Development of Children in Our Communities and Across the Country

Attacking autism and asthma. Making homes healthier for children and families. Helping prevent injuries. Promoting programs that keep children healthy and safe. Our innovative approaches to community childhood health are being replicated in hundreds of cities and towns. We are building sustainable systems that promote the optimal healthy development of all children. Connecticut Children’s is with them where they live, learn and play. We are the people, programs, partnerships and collaborations of the Office for Community Child Health.

Keeping Our Kids Healthy

At Connecticut Children’s, thousands of children come through our doors each year. While our mission is to improve the physical and emotional health of the children in our care, we also value keeping children healthy in their homes and in their communities. Through our Office for Community Child Health (OCCH), we promote the optimal healthy development of all our region’s children by helping them where they live, learn and play.

OCCH: Empowering Families, Optimizing Children’s Health When it comes to children’s health, treating illness is just part of the equation. At Connecticut Children’s, the OCCH promotes children’s healthy development through innovative programs that address critical contemporary issues. We do this by building strong cross-sector collaborations and systems that foster community commitment to healthy child development. Led by Paul Dworkin, MD, executive vice president for Community Child Health, the OCCH oversees and coordinates a host of community-oriented programs across the state to prevent illness, injury and other harm, and to ensure that children receive services within a coordinated system of care.

Making Connecticut’s Children the Healthiest in the NationIt’s all part of Connecticut Children’s vision to make our state’s children the healthiest in the nation. Driven by this vision, the OCCH serves as a coordinating entity for more than a dozen existing community-oriented initiatives, such as the Easy Breathing© asthma management program that ensures children, families and physicians work together to manage asthma symptoms using national guidelines; and the Help Me Grow® National Center, which helps families with children at risk for developmental or behavioral problems find the support and services they need. As an “incubator” for innovative ideas in community childhood health, the OCCH’s unique approach is quickly becoming a model for children’s hospitals across the country. (Learn more about the many other OCCH programs described elsewhere in this brochure.)

The Many Benefits of OCCH Creating synergies among Connecticut Children’s existing community-oriented programs and maximizing their positive impact on children’s health is just one of the benefits of this innovative approach. OCCH also implements a rigorous system of performance and outcomes measurement that monitors the viability and impact of community programs under its umbrella. This framework supports and nurtures innovative and replicable models that children’s hospitals in their regions can use to impact the health of children across the nation.

An Innovative Care Model to Promote Children’s Optimal Healthy Development: Our Mission, Your Impact

Launched in July 2012, the Office for Community Child Health upholds Connecticut Children’s commitment to the optimal healthy development of children in Connecticut. By adopting this unique family- and community-oriented approach, Connecticut Children’s OCCH aspires to become a role model for children’s hospitals throughout the nation. Our donors and their support remain critical to the growth of this important innovation.

Infrastructure Support FundPhilanthropy has played a key role in securing the staff, infrastructure, space and technology needed to respond to the critical contemporary issues that hinder optimal healthy development for children. Donor investments in this fund will enable us to expand the reach of the OCCH and its innovative programs. Every dollar helps reach another child.

Innovation FundIdentifying, nurturing and supporting new and innovative community-oriented health initiatives is the power and future of OCCH. Donors make it possible for OCCH to move swiftly and effectively in implementing and testing innovative solutions to community child health problems.

Program Support FundEvery OCCH program can move faster and impact more children when donors fuel their efforts. From innovation to launch, to impact, to replication, the people, tools and dissemination are made possible by donors.

An Investment in Our Children’s FutureAn investment in Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health is an investment in our children’s future. Won’t you please consider a gift today? Please contact Connecticut Children’s Medical Center Foundation at 860.837.5700 to donate or to discuss possible funding opportunities.

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Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is a nationally recognized, 187-bed not-for-profit children’s hospital serving as the primary teaching hospital for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Named among the best in the nation for several of its pediatric specialties in the annual U.S. News & World Report “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings, Connecticut Children’s is the only free-standing children’s hospital in Connecticut that offers comprehensive, world-class health care to children. Our pediatric services are available at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford and at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, with neonatal intensive care units at Hartford Hospital and the University of Connecticut Health Center, along with a state-of-the-art ambulatory surgery center, five specialty care centers and 11 other locations across the state. Connecticut Children’s has a medical staff of nearly 1,100 practicing in more than 30 specialties.

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DIABETES & ENDOCRINOLOGY

GASTROENTEROLOGY & GI SURGERY

NEONATOLOGY

ORTHOPEDICS

PULMONOLOGY

UROLOGY

282 Washington Street, Hartford, CT 06106. © 2014 Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. All rights reserved. 14-051 New 5-14

OCCH Programs At-A-GlanceAs part of Connecticut Children’s vision to make

Connecticut’s children the healthiest in the nation – and with

generous support from our donors – the OCCH currently

fosters the following innovative community-based programs:

Help Me Grow® National Center Help Me Grow® helps families with children at risk for developmental or behavioral problems find local support and services through a central call center. Supported by the National Center based at Connecticut Children’s, more than 20 states are replicating Help Me Grow®.

Hartford Childhood Wellness Alliance/Growing Up Healthy The Hartford Childhood Wellness Alliance is a collaboration among community organizations, health care providers, schools, early childhood education and daycare centers, as well as local and regional government, led by Connecticut Children’s. The mission of the Alliance is to reduce obesity and increase community-wide opportunities to improve nutrition, activity and lifestyle among children in Hartford. Through the Alliance, Connecticut Children’s manages Growing Up Healthy, a program that helps define the role primary care providers play in preventing childhood obesity and models the positive effects of clinical intervention.

Educating Practices in the Community (EPIC) The Child Health and Development Institute’s EPIC program uses “academic detailing” to help community primary care providers improve the care they provide to children. EPIC uses simple messages aimed at changing behavior. Topics range from developmental surveillance and screening to teen driver safety.

Maintenance of Certification (MOC) The Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program helps primary care providers use a data-driven, quality improvement approach to improve the services they provide to children. MOC activities help practices improve surveillance and screening for developmental risks, screening for behavioral concerns, and connection of children and families to helpful services. This program is made possible through the generosity of UnitedHealthcare.

Lead Action for Medicaid Primary Prevention (LAMPP) Green & Healthy Homes The LAMPP Green & Healthy Homes projects improve children’s health by making their homes healthier, safer and more energy efficient. Serving low-income families with children and at-risk elderly residents in older housing, the program addresses critical housing hazards, such as lead and other harmful exposures and asthma triggers.

Co-Management Co-Management – an innovative care model that increases patient access to subspecialty services – empowers primary care providers to improve the breadth and quality of the care they deliver. As a partnership between community physicians and hospital subspecialists, Co-Management allows children to receive some of their subspecialty care within their medical home and ensures that they receive timely access to subspecialty care when needed.

Mid-Level Developmental Assessment (MLDA) Through Mid-Level Developmental Assessment, children with behavioral or developmental concerns identified through surveillance and screening can be evaluated more quickly and less expensively. OCCH collaborates with the Village for Families and Children, Inc. and the United Way of Connecticut to provide these services.

Injury Prevention Center (IPC) The Injury Prevention Center works to prevent needless tragedies among Connecticut’s children and youth. IPC’s Safe Kids Connecticut program provides education, safe teen driving campaigns and advocates for effective laws for teen drivers. The Injury Free Coalition for Kids of Hartford leads community-based violence prevention work.

Easy Breathing© Easy Breathing©, a community-based asthma management program, ensures children, families and physicians work together to manage asthma symptoms using national asthma guidelines. Since its introduction in 1998, the program has seen widespread use across Connecticut and has been replicated in nine states.

Resident Education in Advocacy and Community Health (REACH) Fostering the growth of future generations of community child health advocates, the REACH program nurtures pediatric residents to become our future leaders by providing them with opportunities to work in community-based programs and services.

Hartford Care Coordination Collaborative The Hartford Care Coordination Collaborative, whose membership includes care coordinators from a variety of child-serving sectors in the Greater Hartford region, improves communication among coordinators and provides effective links to services for children and families. With members including the United Way, CT Family Support Network, Medicaid and mental health providers, OCCH leads this shared resource with support from Connecticut Children’s Special Kids Support Center.

Hartford Youth HIV Identification and Linkage Consortium (HYHIL) As a network of medical and mental health providers, youth representatives and others, the Hartford Youth HIV Identification and Linkage Consortium works to prevent the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in adolescents through outreach, counseling and testing for at-risk youth. HYHIL also offers preventive education and connects HIV-positive youth to health care resources.

282 Washington Street, Hartford, CT 06106, © 2014 Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. All rights reserved. 14-144 New 5-14 WWW.CONNECTICUTCHILDRENS.ORG