Children are our future, which means children’s healthcare is the critical infrastructure of our future, too. Authors of a report co-sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics outline key goals for an American healthcare system that supports whole child health, which involves everything from community-based systems to payment reform. At the core of it all is independent pediatrics: uniquely positioned for advocacy, change, and single-handed transformation of what it looks like to care for American children.
Launching Lifelong Health
The report “Launching Lifelong Health by Improving Health Care for Children, Youth, and Families” is a nearly 500-page study of American healthcare systems, its needs for the future, and goals and strategies for its achievement. The AAP was a co-sponsor of the report, along with the Academic Pediatric Association, Children’s Hospital Association, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
That’s a long report. Let’s break it down.
Who wrote it?
Three national academies worked together to compile the report. They acted “together as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The National Academies also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine.”
Why?
The report details many aspects of why pediatric healthcare infrastructure change is so important. First of all, change helps the whole-person health of children now, but would extend support to families, communities, and healthcare homes such as pediatric practices. Pediatric healthcare supports healthy communities, which is more important than ever, with a declining birth rate and a large aging population. Simply put, healthy kids tend to grow into healthy adults, who may participate with fewer disabilities and more happiness in the cooperative work of American society.
In addition, Americans lag behind other industrial nations in child health status, and if care does not evolve, the nation faces steep socioeconomic and health-related risks.
“The path forward accelerates the move to team care in communities, inclusion of mental and behavioral health and community health workers, and major improvements in the science and organization of pediatric subspecialty care.”
The report suggests the following goals for the future of American pediatric healthcare:
- Elevate the importance of child and adolescent health for the nation through continuous public focus on children and youth.
- Finance health care systems for all children, emphasizing prevention and health promotion.
- Strengthen community-level health promotion and disease prevention.
- Ensure co-creation and co-design of programs and structures with youth, family, and community voices and leadership.
- Implement measurement and accountability to ensure equitable achievement of these goals.
These goals depend on large-scale change across millions of people and many organizations, including federal, state, and local governments, private companies, commercial insurers, hospitals, health care clinics, pediatric medical homes, and the wide range of providers who care for children.
The Future of Healthcare is Independent
Many of the suggested strategies of the report will sound familiar to independent pediatricians, especially those active in the AAP’s Section on Administration and Practice Management (SOAPM). They include Medicaid and CHIP payment reform and reform from fee-for-service to managed care payment systems.
With payment reform, pediatricians would have incentives to provide flexible care, which includes working with families and communities to care for all children. Independent pediatricians are familiar with the movement towards payment reform as they are intimately acquainted with negotiating with spurious insurance contracts and often taking on personal financial risk to expand healthcare services into much-needed territories, such as behavioral and mental healthcare.
Independent pediatricians are the medical home of the children and families in their community. Their reputations and relationships with families are the basis of co-designing healthcare that works across cultures, needs, and locations. Their connections within their communities have the potential to transform healthcare systems and enact other community — and state and national — changes.
The report explains that multidisciplinary teams are required to support whole-child health. Independent pediatricians usually benefit from a close-knit team of nurses, social workers, therapists, community health workers, and many more providers that establish cohesive collaboration. They’re also well connected with area schools, where more important healthcare goals, such as nutrition, health education, and socio-emotional learning, occur.
Further, independent pediatricians can help larger organizations see things from the ground-level. They can use data and anecdotal experience to reflect on gaps in healthcare, which contribute in part to racial and geographic inequities.
What Can You Do?
Independent pediatricians can leverage their influence to advocate for increased Medicaid and CHIP reimbursement rates, enabling them to expand access to critical services like mental and behavioral healthcare. They can also work with local schools, social services, and other community organizations to develop integrated, holistic care models that address the social determinants of health.
The future of pediatric healthcare in America lies in the hands of independent pediatricians. They can drive the transformative changes outlined in this landmark report by embracing their role as advocates, innovators, and community leaders.
With their unwavering commitment to whole-child health, independent pediatricians are poised to shape a brighter, healthier future for the next generation of Americans. Health organizations and governments will follow where pediatricians lead, as they already perform nearly all of the suggestions for the lifelong health of children, families, and communities.
Check out the full report here or read a summary.
