Syracuse, NY – Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital and the Early Childhood Alliance Onondaga (ECA) are pleased to announce their participation in the Pediatrics Supporting Families (PSP) Phase 2 Learning Community.
Launched in 2017, PSP is working to address key structural barriers affecting young children’s health while also making the case for system-wide transformation of the well-child visit. In the latest phase of their work, PSP competitively selected five communities from across the nation to participate in a multi-year, shared-learning initiative and serve as “proof point communities,” achieving concrete changes in pediatric primary care that support children’s social and emotional development and nurturing parent-child relationships. Together, the communities will pursue opportunities to share best practices, gain learnings in pediatric care transformation, and identify opportunities to foster continued collaboration across the field to improve outcomes for children and families. The overarching goals of the PSP Phase 2 Learning Community are:
- To improve the lives of families with young children 0-3, who are predominately at-risk or underserved, through (1) adopting concrete changes in pediatric primary care; (2) strengthening the enabling conditions at the state and national levels to build momentum; and (3) supporting longer-term sustainability that extends beyond PSP’s investment horizon.
- To use a multi-level shared Learning Community approach to develop a change package for the pediatric primary care sector leveraging the case studies of how each team applied, demonstrated, and learned from the approach and process.
As part of their participation, each proof point community will receive a $120,000 grant for a one-year planning process, followed by anywhere between $400,000 and $750,000 for technical assistance and implementation over the next three years. Upstate and the ECA plan to use that funding to leverage the community’s existing assets and build new strengths into the system.
“The Early Childhood Alliance looks forward to working with Upstate’s Pediatric and Adolescent Center (UPAC) over the next four years to develop innovative approaches for strengthening pediatric care that will support equity and early relational health for patients and families and advance a model for elevating parent voice,” said ECA Director Laurie Black.
Targeted goals for Upstate and the ECA include elevating parent voice and building a sustainable parent advisory committee for UPAC; exploring existing needs and gaps and identifying programs, practices, or changes that will improve outcomes for children and families through parent-centered planning; and identifying a framework for seamlessly integrating social-emotional development and early relational health into the well-child visit.
“The Pediatrics Supporting Parents initiative will build upon Upstate’s strong history of leading large-scale, collaborative projects and further demonstrate our commitment to community engagement,” said Dr. Steven Blatt, Director of Upstate Pediatric and Adolescent Center. “Upstate is a leader not only in healthcare, but also in innovative, collaborative projects aimed at improving population health.”
Upstate and the ECA have assembled a multi-sector PSP team that includes representatives from UPAC, the ECA, the ECA’s Parents in Partnership Initiative, Onondaga County, the Allyn Family Foundation, Catholic Charities of Onondaga County, Child Care Solutions, the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York, and PEACE, Inc. Dr. Jenica O’Malley, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at SUNY Upstate, will serve as the lead pediatrician coordinating the PSP work on behalf of Upstate’s Pediatric and Adolescent Center.
“Upstate’s Pediatric and Adolescent Center staff have historically partnered well with community-based organizations,” O’Malley noted. “We are excited to take this work to the next level and center parent voice and equity in our practice as we advance early relational health in the first few years of life.”
Jade McAlmont, new mother and ECA parent leader, looks forward to the positive relationships this collaborative effort seeks to establish.
“Children truly cannot be healthy if they don’t have healthy parents or caregivers,” McAlmont noted. “When we have positive relationships with our health providers, we form a level of preventative care that protects everyone in the active triad – parents, children, and pediatricians/health providers.”
The other PSP Phase 2 Proof Point Communities and their healthcare partners are:
- Durham Partners for Early Relational Health with Duke Children’s Primary Care
- LIFT/ACEs LA Medical-Financial Partnership with Network for Care
- University of California San Francisco Center for Child and Community Health with the Ready! Resilient! Rising! (R3) Network
- Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics with Pediatrics Northwest
To learn more about Pediatrics Supporting Parents, visit pediatricssupportingparents.org.
