childrenshealthfund.org
C H I L D R E N ’ S H E A LT H F U N D FALL 2013
Defeating Distance Breaking down barriers to care with telemedicine
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Dr. Lisa Gwynn uses telemedicine to connect Anya Williams with a medical specialist
iles of Florida highway once stood between Anya Marie Williams and the health care she needed. Not anymore. Like many children in America, Anya lives far from a major medical center. To visit a specialist, she would have to travel for hours from her home in Homestead near the Florida Everglades to Miami and back again. For her mother, finding transportation, missing work, and getting child care for Anya’s sister could easily break their family budget. But recently, a specialist was exactly what Anya needed. “Not long ago, I noticed bumps on my daughter’s hand,” Ms. Williams said. “I was worried, because I’ve heard they can be cancerous.” Fortunately, Anya’s mother knew just where to turn— to Dr. Lisa Gwynn at the Children’s Health Fund mobile medical clinic. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
KIDS GROW UP
In the Driver’s Seat Focusing on the future, thanks to good health care When Isani Castro of the South Bronx was a child, she and her brother Gabriel got to sit behind the wheel of Children’s Health Fund’s big blue bus. They were too young to drive, of course, but not too young to start steering their health in the right direction with regular visits to the mobile medical clinic. When Isani’s mother was
pregnant with her, she discovered the Children’s Health Fund services in the South Bronx, which are provided in partnership with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. There she met Dr. Altagracia Tolentino, who would become a central figure in the health of the entire Castro family. A few years later, while Isani was attending a Head Start pre-school program, her mother noticed something wasn’t right with one of Isani’s eyes. Naturally, she took her daughter straight to Dr. Tolentino, who suspected amblyopia or “lazy eye” and referred her to an ophthalmologist. The specialist
2005 Gabriel and Isani Castro get an early start on the road to health
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A word from the President
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ll across America, millions of children are struggling in school because preventable or easily treatable medical conditions are interfering with their ability to learn. If children can’t see the board because they haven’t had their eyes checked to diagnose a vision problem, or they are up all night coughing with uncontrolled asthma, then they are in an uphill battle to get the most out of their education. Studies have shown that some 37 percent of elementary-age children who suffer hearing loss have to repeat at least one grade, and many school-age children have vision problems that may affect their ability to learn. Asthma, which is epidemic in many parts of the country and disproportionately affects kids in poverty, results in 12.8 million missed school days every year, and causes many children go to school exhausted from nighttime symptoms. We call them “health-related barriers to learning” and they are playing out in nearly every classroom across the country. As Americans debate how to create a more robust and effective educational system, we have to understand that access to health care is a key piece of the puzzle, starting even before children begin school—during the crucial developmental period that sets the stage for lifelong learning. That’s why Children’s Health Fund has launched EVERY CHILD A CHANCE, a public awareness campaign to call attention to the underreported relationship between a child’s good health and his or her potential for educational achievement. Parents magazine helped us launch the campaign in August, and in the months ahead we hope to foster a national conversation and promote ways that parents, educators and medical professionals can work together to ensure that all children are healthy and ready to learn from birth right through graduation. Dr. Irwin Redlener, PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER
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A new subway ad campaign will help kids get the medical care they need to be healthy in school.
Tackling Asthma in School Partnering with educators and parents to keep kids healthy and ready to learn The leadership of the New York City principals’ union—the Council for School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA)—was concerned that so many kids have asthma attacks in schools and reached out to Children’s Health Fund this past spring, just as we were getting ready to launch the EVERY CHILD A CHANCE campaign. Bridging education and health care, we have been working together ever since. “When I was a middle school principal, my heart sank weekly when we were forced to call an ambulance for an asthmatic child,” said Ernest Logan, the president of CSA. “The onset of an asthma attack is terrifying to a sick child, upsetting to classmates, and stressful for teachers and administrators.” At least 140,000 New York City school children have asthma and fewer than half have a very important medication permission form on file. The MAF/504 form authorizes school personnel to provide medication if a child has an asthma attack. When the form is not on file, schools often have no recourse but to call 911—a traumatic and expensive alternative for families. To tackle this problem, CSA and Children’s Health Fund teamed up to create a colorful public service ad campaign that is currently running in the NYC subway system. The back-to-school campaign is a reminder to parents to be sure to provide essential medical forms to their child’s school so that their child can be healthy and ready to learn.
Visit childrenshealthfund.org to learn more about EVERY CHILD A CHANCE and add your voice!
childrenshealthfund.org
DEFEATING DISTANCE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Anya and her mother already had a strong relationship with Dr. Gwynn, medical director of the Children’s Health Fund program in South Florida that is operated in partnership with University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. A couple of years ago when Anya had developed back pain, a school nurse referred her to the mobile medical clinic, which makes regular visits to Homestead. Dr. Gwynn suspected that Anya had scoliosis—curvature of the spine—and connected her to a nearby hospital where Anya had surgery for the condition. “After that I grew four inches,” said Anya, standing up straight and smiling. Anya continued to see Dr. Gwynn for regular check-ups, and when her mother discovered the lesion on her hand, Dr. Gwynn knew that Anya needed to consult with a dermatological specialist in Miami. But thanks to an innovative technology partnership with the Verizon Foundation, Anya would not have to travel to Miami to see the dermatologist. Instead, the specialist would come to Anya via telemedicine, a powerful technology that allows doctors to observe a patient’s symptoms via video and to receive important health information such as heart rate and blood pressure. At the same time, patients and their parents can ask questions of the doctors just as if they were in the same room. Dr. Gwynn is now able to bring patients like Anya onto the medical clinic in rural areas of South Florida and connect them over a 4G LTE broadband connection with specialists in the advanced telehealth program at the University of Miami Health System. The South Florida telemedicine pilot project launched this summer—with Anya as one of its first patients. “Children’s Health Fund has been operating mobile medical clinics for 26 years, and now Verizon is helping us create the next generation of mobile care with sophisticated technology upgrades,” said Jeb Weisman, chief information officer at Children’s Health Fund. “We plan to expand the telehealth program to other parts of the country so that children never again have to be separated from the care they deserve— no matter how great the distance.”
2013 Isani and Gabriel—still smiling
DRIVER’S SEAT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
confirmed the diagnosis and prescribed glasses with a special prism for Isani. The prism eventually corrected the problem and now Isani has outstanding vision without glasses. “It’s fortunate that we caught the problem early,” said Dr. Tolentino. “As children age, the condition becomes more difficult to correct and can have a negative impact on their development.” Today, Isani is excelling in her classwork and looking forward to college. “I have my eyes on Columbia University,” she said. “I’d like to be a lawyer someday.” Meanwhile, Gabriel is working at a local pharmacy and also planning to go to college in the near future. Over the years, Dr. Tolentino has had many opportunities to help the Castro children stay healthy. “Dr. Tolentino has taken care of all of our kids growing up. She knows us. She’s been our family doctor all these years,” Isani’s father said. Thanks to good health care, Isani and Gabriel still have their hands on the wheel and are in the fast lane to exciting, productive and successful lives.
FALL 2013
By the numbers
301 service sites
70% are schools
83,000 children & family members served each year
C H I L D R E N ’ S H E A LT H F U N D
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215 WEST 125TH STREET, SUITE 301 NEW YORK, NY 10027
FALL 2013
Overcoming Distance With Telemedicine
Beating Asthma in School
Kids Grow Up
We Couldn’t Do It Without You
Parting shot You can’t keep a good family down. Superstorm Sandy took its toll, but Riley, Kirsten and Sean Smith (above) are on the road to recovery. Thanks to help from Children’s Health Fund, and supporters like Robin Hood and Sanofi Foundation for North America—along with a lot of incredible folks in their hometown of Brick, New Jersey—the siblings were able to keep their asthma and other health conditions under control so they could stay in school and look to the future with hope in the aftermath of the devastating storm.
Sanofi Foundation for North America’s leadership support of the Medical Home Initiative is directly impacting more than 15,000 low-income children each year by supporting the comprehensive health care being provided by six Children’s Health Fund mobile health programs across the country. In addition, many Sanofi US employees have participated in a variety of volunteer efforts that have benefited hundreds of vulnerable families in Detroit, New Jersey and New York City, including victims of Superstorm Sandy. More volunteer projects are planned across the US for later this year.
A leadership grant from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation is enabling thousands of vulnerable children to access critical medical and mental health services provided
by Children’s Health Fund’s New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast mobile programs, which serve communities still impacted by the Gulf Coast oil spill of 2010.
More than 43,000 kids and family members have benefited from the successful Community Health Centers of Excellence Initiative developed by Children’s Health Fund and United Health Foundation. With the Foundation’s signature support since 2004, our New York Flagship Program implemented evidence-based innovative primary care programs that have not only improved the health of thousands of homeless and low-income children and families but also surpass national quality benchmarks and serve as models of care for disadvantaged communities throughout the country.