childrenshealthfund.org
C H I L D R E N ’ S H E A LT H F U N D FALL 2016
A Little Closer to Good Health
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Terra Firma participant Brenda Cloter discusses one of her pictures at a year-end photography show in conjunction with the International Center for Photography.
Picturing Healthy Lives in a New Land
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his is a clear demonstration of the New York values we all hold dear – that every child is equally important,” said Children’s Health Fund Executive Director Dennis Walto as he praised a major new investment in New York City’s Immigrant Health Initiative. The new funding was announced this past August in the South Bronx at Children Health Fund’s Terra Firma program – one of the major partners working to support immigrants in New York City. As Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito explained, “Our $1.5 million dollar initiative will go a long way in ensuring undocumented immigrants, unaccompanied minors, and other vulnerable populations have access to the comprehensive medical services they deserve.” Terra Firma, a project of the Children’s Health Fund, Catholic Charities and the Montefiore Medical Center, is an innovative, nationally recognized medical-legal partnership that provides CONTINUED ON PAGE 1
he boy’s skin was covered with lesions. Nearly two weeks earlier, a rash had begun spreading up his lower body. When his mother brought him to our mobile pediatric clinic in South Florida, his palms and soles had begun peeling dramatically. The four-year-old boy’s family had recently immigrated from Haiti and were still orienting themselves to life in their new home. His mother was clearly concerned by the scaly eruptions all over her son’s body. And the boy was none too happy either. Fortunately, they had access to the mobile medical clinic run by Children’s Health Fund and the University of Miami Medical Center in South Florida. Under the direction of Medical Director Lisa Gwynn, DO, the big blue doctor’s office on wheels there makes the rounds in the immigrant neighborhoods of Little Havana, Hialeah and Little Haiti, as well as in rural stretches of Miami-Dade county. The clinic gets around, but lately it does much more than that. For the past few years, Dr. Gwynn and her team have been pioneering the use of telemedicine technology to improve the care of their patients. The program is making strides through generous support from Morgan Stanley, Joey Logano Foundation and Comic Relief/Red Nose Day. And many of the new approaches Children’s Health Fund is deploying throughout its national network are being developed through an ongoing technology partnership with Samsung.
With a patient and her mother on the South Florida mobile clinic, Dr. Lisa Gwynn discusses a diagnosis with specialists at a remote location.
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