Service through Community-Academic Partnerships
The Pediatric Advocacy Program works with a variety community partners to improve child health and well being and reduce health disparities. Residents in the StAT program begin the process of developing strong partnerships by first asking and listening to community priorities. They use the principles and values of Community-based Participatory Research as they engage in these collaborative endeavors. The following are descriptions of current and past community and legislative advocacy projects.
Rachel Bensen (Class of 2010)
Legislative Advocacy in Child Health (LACH)
The LACH project aims to provide legislative advocacy updates and presentations during LPCH and Santa Clara Valley Grand Rounds, as a means of educating our colleagues about current important legislative issues relating to child health. The goal is to influence the culture of our institution by making education and activism about child health related legislative issues both easy and a part of routine educational programs for people at all levels of training. The presentations will also facilitate action by highlighting simple ways we as health care providers can take action to promote policies that are favorable for children’s health.
Monica Eneriz Wiemer (Class of 2009) & Keely Olmsted (Class of 2010)
Children’s Hospitals & Global Partnerships: Partnering with St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Malawi
Children’s Hospitals and Global Partnerships aims to develop a sustainable partnership between Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) and St. Gabriel’s Hospital in Malawi. The project first evaluated the needs of St. Gabriel’s Hospital in pediatric care (including focus groups with clinical health workers, hospital staff and parents) during a two week visit by Dr. Eneriz-Weimer in 2007. Areas of need identified included neonatal resuscitation staff training and quality improvement efforts. A resuscitation program was developed and implemented by Dr. Olmstead in 2008. Dr. Olmstead is currently revising the curriculum and plans to do another training in 2009. Additionally, the project is developing a model program for a global health track for pediatric residents. Dr. Eneriz-Weimer is conducting interviews with pediatric global health training faculty at best practice institutions across the country. The findings from this project will be analyzed and will be currently being written up for manuscript submission.
John Peoples (Class of 2009)
Out of School Youth Outreach Project
The OSY (Out of School Youth) Outreach Project is designed to improve the independent health care skills of adolescent migrant farm workers who work in Gilroy (aged 15-21) by conducting focus groups to learn about adolescents’ health, social and educational needs. One need that arose from the focus groups was a lack of health supplies and information. The OSY project team developed and distributing Health Care Kits containing materials that address basic healthcare needs – pesticide exposure, wound care, heat stroke/dehydration, and STD prevention – as well as contact resources of local healthcare services. The findings from this project have been analyzed and are currently being written up for manuscript submission.
Arti Desai (Class of 2009)
Universal Children’s Health Coverage: Uniting Children’s Hospitals to Affect Change
The project’s main objective is to increase legislative action among pediatricians and children’s hospitals to advocate for children. The project is designed to partner with community child advocacy groups in order to improve access to health coverage for children. A needs assessment of children’s hospitals was conducted to determine how to maximize resources, establish partnerships with child advocacy organizations, and participate in legislative action including letter writing campaigns, phone calls and meeting with legislators. The findings from this project have been analyzed and are currently being written up for manuscript submission.
MyMy Buu (Class of 2009)
Happy 5: Needs of Vietnamese Children
Happy 5 is a project designed to promote child development, health care utilization, safety and preventative health for preschool aged Vietnamese children in Santa Clara County. A needs assessment including focus groups was conducted to gather preliminary data for use by the community partner organization to define areas of need and program objectives. The second phase of the project includes engagement with the community partners and outreach via a media project with Vietnamese language radio and newspaper in order to bring health education and resource awareness to the linguistically isolated community. The findings from this project have been analyzed and are currently being written up for manuscript submission.
Maria Mosquera and Heather Iezza (Class of 2007)
Healthy Weight Healthy Futures Program: Partnering with Head Start in East Palo Alto
A collaboration between Head Start in East Palo Alto and the Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) to facilitate the development of a parent designed, family-centered obesity prevention program for preschool aged children and parents. The program was designed to improve dietary and physical activity behaviors of Latino preschool age children and their families. Parents participated in a series of focus and working groups to examine strategies and barriers for promoting health dietary and physical activity behaviors, evaluate best practice models for obesity prevention, and develop a basic framework for a culturally appropriate and community-specific obesity prevention program for preschool aged children. Residents Mosquera and Iezza developed and tailored classes using existing curricula to meet parents' needs. The series of classes were given in 2007 and individual sessions are still used for parent classes in East Palo Alto.
School nutrition is activists' passion: How 4 dedicated people work to help Bay Area students eat right. August 28, 2006. San Francisco Chronicle, by Stacy Finz.
Fighting obesity through the power of parents. July 28, 2006. Palo Alto Weekly, by Alexandria Rocha.
Anisha Patel (Class of 2005)
Un Equilibrio San (A Healthy Balance)
A collaboration with the Mayfair Improvement Initiative (Now Somos Mayfair) in San Jose, CA. Anisha began working with MII promatores to provide health education to neighborhood residents. Parents s identified pediatric obesity as a concern and Anisha set off to help parents reduce obesity in their community. Through a series of focus groups, parents identified the local school field as their top concern. The field
was in need of repair to increase physical activity among school children, and to make it a place were the community can go to be active. With the support of the school principal, planning meetings were held at the school, letter writing campaings for funding were conducted, several mini-grants were submitted, and meetings with members from the School Board were held. Additionally, nutrition and physicial activity classes were held for parents, and several field days were held for children, with help from Stanford Medical Students and undergraduates. A grant for $15,000 was received from the Valley Foundation to support the field renovation and the School Board agreed to maintain the field.
Rich foods a big threat to poor kids. December 3, 2004. San Jose Mercury News.
