Children’s Hospital Doctors Receive Grants
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 16, 2009) – While the nation struggles with the big picture of health care, pediatricians throughout America and here in Kentucky continue to advocate for access to care for underserved kids in their local communities.
[IMAGE1]
University of Kentucky physicians have received grants to continue their advocacy in this area. Dr. Susan Pollack, a pediatrician at Kentucky Children’s Hospital and the Medical Home for Coordinated Pediatrics (children in foster care and others with special health care needs), and assistant professor of pediatrics, UK College of Medicine, the Department of Preventive Medicine, UK College of Public Health and the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, and Dr. Kim Northrip, a pediatrician at Kentucky Children's Hospital who focuses on community pediatrics and medical education, and assistant professor of pediatrics, UK College of Medicine, have both received 2009 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) planning grants. CATCH planning grants help pediatricians partner with communities to provide all children with access to the care and services that they need.
“My CATCH grant allows us to build community partnerships and better understand the civil legal needs of Fayette County's underprivileged families," said Northrip who also is medical director of Child Advocacy Today: A Medical Legal Partnership for Kentucky’s Children. "The Child Advocacy Today program plans to use this needs assessment to target our medical-legal partnership’s resources to provide the greatest benefit to the children of our community. By involving community partners we hope to be able to reach more families, discover resources for our clients, and build community support for our program."
Pollack said the purpose of her CATCH grant is to assess the obstacles to mental health services for children in foster care.. “We started with the assumption that many children in foster care would benefit from mental health services, but that there was a shortage of providers, which would be our major obstacle," Pollack said. "However, it soon became clear that there were many obstacles in the way before providers were ever an issue. Through surveys and interviews of foster parents and grandparents and the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) workers and mental health providers, we hope to clarify those obstacles as a first step toward resolving them, and improving the access to mental health services for all children in foster care."
AAP has recently awarded 40 CATCH planning grants nationwide, totaling $353,000, which were made possible by Wyeth, the program’s founding sponsor.
To learn more about the CATCH planning grant program and this year’s awardees, visit the American Academy of Pediatrics at www.aap.org/catch.
Kentucky Children's Hospital works to improve the lives and health of children and to provide a more optimistic future for their families. More than 70 pediatric specialists, 300 pediatric nurses and an impressive number of respiratory therapists, dieticians, social workers, pharmacists and child-life specialists are dedicated to caring for children. Each year, Kentucky Children's Hospital admits more than 6,000 children and serves another 60,000 through emergency care, clinics and outreach programs.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.
Wyeth, the founding sponsor of the CATCH Planning Funds program, has generously supported CATCH planning grants since 1993. As a result of Wyeth's sponsorship, thousands of children nationwide now have a medical home and access to quality health care services.