Families, Systems & Health : the Journal of Collaborative Family Healthcare

INTRODUCTION: A large portion of preschool-age children with developmental delays and disabilities (PCw/DD) do not receive recommended therapeutic services, including legally mandated school-based therapies. This study examines the feasibility of a community-clinical linkage using virtual patient navigation and a medical-educational care plan called Preschool and Me (PreM) to connect clinical settings serving historically marginalized communities with early childhood special education (ECSE) services...

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study is to assess a cross-sector, interorganizational network addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in a rural Colorado community. We characterize the organizations in the network, assess their awareness of ACEs, and evaluate how they participate in the network. We also assess the network health. METHOD: Employing a social network analysis approach, we collected survey data from 45 organizations that support young children and their families, including nonprofits, health care clinics, and early childhood education centers, among others...

INTRODUCTION: Family, friends, and romantic partners (i.e., supporters) play a key role in the implementation of safety and support measures for loved ones with elevated risk for suicide; yet despite the link between interpersonal factors and suicide risk, few supporter-focused interventions exist. METHOD: This qualitative study to inform intervention development was conducted from September 2021 to March 2022 and explored (a) the feasibility and acceptability of a single-session phone call to a support person ( n = 30, 67% female, 88% White non-Hispanic, M age = 40...

INTRODUCTION: Discussions comparing the components and virtues of models of integrated behavioral health (IBH), that is, collaborative care management and primary care behavioral health, have been ongoing. In this conceptual article, we recommend shifting the focus to a broader set of components we have found essential to serve the needs of our patients, and hopefully the broader aims of dissemination and implementation of IBH. METHOD: We detail our 20-year experience including the personnel, program components, challenges, successes, and plans for the future that will meet our patients' behavioral health needs and serve primary care...

INTRODUCTION: Addressing U.S. health disparities in behavioral health care requires innovative solutions to expand access beyond the traditional specialty behavioral health (BH) service model. One evidence-based strategy to increase access is task shifting, whereby tasks usually reserved for licensed clinicians are delegated to less specialized but uniquely capable health workers. Health care systems in the United States have been slow to adopt this approach, despite the widespread success of task shifting in other countries...

INTRODUCTION: Studies in the United States have shown associations between family/shared meal frequency and child health and well-being. Less is known about family/shared meal characteristics (e.g., frequency, meal type, meal activities) in adults and international samples and whether there are protective associations between family/shared meal frequency and emotional well-being. Also unknown, is whether family meals provide protective associations for other family members in the household...

INTRODUCTION: Despite the well-documented youth mental health crisis, there has been a lag in the development of a specialized workforce to meet needs of young people experiencing these challenges. Little is known about the comfort of primary care pediatricians when faced with children and adolescents with mental health care concerns. METHOD: A brief online survey was conducted to assess patterns of behavioral and mental health concerns in pediatric practices affiliated with a pediatric health system in Alabama...

INTRODUCTION: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) greatly impacts the social, emotional, and physical well-being of the patient and their family. The transplant process imposes significant lifestyle restrictions that result in patient and family isolation, which has been further amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic era. While hospital systems recognize the importance of family engagement, the pandemic underscored the need to translate this philosophy more fully into practice...

INTRODUCTION: The primary care behavioral health (PCBH) model is one of the most widely implemented integrated care approaches. However, research on the model has been limited by inconsistent measurement and reporting of model fidelity. One way of making measurement of PCBH model fidelity more routine is to incorporate fidelity indicators into the electronic medical record (EMR), though research regarding the accuracy of EMR data is mixed. In this study, we aimed to assess the reliability of EMR data as a PCBH fidelity measurement tool by comparing key EMR indicators of PCBH fidelity to those recorded by an observational coder...

INTRODUCTION: Evidence is lacking about how to integrate family and community voice into systems of care. This is particularly relevant in public health crises when reducing barriers to health care and resources is critical for everyone, but especially community members who typically experience more barriers to care. Addressing this gap, this study investigated the voice strategies used by systems of care to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: We conducted semi-structured interviews in three U...

INTRODUCTION: A growing number of children have developmental delay (DD) or intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), and early intervention (EI) can improve their developmental trajectory. However, access to EI is fraught with disparities. This article describes the development of Parent Navigator (PN) program that placed three parents with lived experience in a pediatric medical home to serve as community health workers to provide support to families with a child with DD or IDD to access EI and other needed resources...

In this article, the author frames the development of integrated care and the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) through the ecocycle planning model. With four distinct stages of development and renewal-gestation, birth, maturity, and creative destruction-the ecocycle planning model encourages organizations to consider ways to ask questions to avoid a rigidity trap, which in the model appears as a process after maturity. As CFHA approaches its 30th year in 2024, the author documents a rough, imperfect history for a shared understanding of how integrated care and CFHA reached maturity and invites the readers to engage in critical questions to avoid the rigidity trap...

A poem describing the author's emotional response to seeing the children of elderly patients in hospital wards. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This poem recounts the author's experience as a child living with a mother suffering from bipolar disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This poem recounts a patient's experience with pancreatic cancer. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This sonnet is a brief symbolic meditation on the brevity of life and the "thin red line": by turns blood (stream/supply and life-giving), a boundary to be crossed (the Rubicon), the limit of our medical (and surgical) endeavors, and finally our horizon. "The thin red line" is also a metaphor for resistance, attributed in part to Kipling's poem Tommy : in particular to resilience by the few, against ostensibly superior forces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This narrative recounts a medical resident's experience with a patient's desire to not receive life sustaining treatment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A seminal National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus report released in May 2021- Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care -emphasizes the importance of ensuring that high-quality primary care is accessible to all people, regardless of whether they have paid for it and in spite of its limited availability. This report outlines five recommendations for primary care stakeholders seeking to transform the health care landscape. This article summarizes these recommendations; identifies progress made toward high-quality primary care implementation since the report's publication; and outlines examples of policies, operational approaches, and advocacy strategies we believe are necessary to implement high-quality primary care...

Reviews the book The empathy exams: Essays . Empathy is a universally important aspect of both life and medicine that helps cultivate a therapeutic relationship between healthcare professionals and patients, family and loved ones, community members and friends, and beyond. As the times have evolved, empathy has become increasingly essential in not only elevating the quality of patient-centered care but also nurturing meaningful relationships and compassionate bonds among communities and families. Empathy encompasses an emotional understanding of another's pain and suffering and also invites self-reflection and humility...

Child health inequities are largely the result of entrenched, structural barriers created by racism, sexism, xenophobia, classism, and ableism that generally persist across the life course (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014). The impact of such inequities may be magnified for those with complex needs who face considerable challenges in adulthood (Bethell et al., 2014), such as preterm infants, who experience threats to both short- and longterm health and development. Challenges in integrated care remain for all children, especially this population, despite extensive work across many decades to address such issues...