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Advocacy
Dr. Jane Foy developed the advocacy curriculum to offer both a didactic component as well as a longitudinal project that can continue throughout residency. Dr. Foy herself is a well respected child advocate, and currently focusing her efforts as Chairperson of the AAP Task Force on Mental Health.
Recent resident projects have focused on gun safety, premature births, improving knowledge of mental health, community gardens, and improving Communications between hospitalists and community physicians.
For incoming residents we spend part of orientation learning about the community our patients live in during the Community Plunge. During the trip, various faculty members give a tour of the city pointing out the neighborhoods of our patients, schools, special community resources and buildings. The day also includes meetings with different community organizations, including church groups, hispanic families, teenage mothers, and other groups that represent our patients and their specific needs.
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Garick Hill: "During my first year advocacy experience I was struck by how many great services were available in Forsyth County. However, I wondered if I would know they were available if I had not gone through the experience. For my advocacy project I attempted to assess the knowledge of community physicians and Wake Forest residents about the services available and the ease of referral to these services. I conducted a survey to achieve this goal. I obtained 43 responses from practicing Pediatricians and residents. The residents and recent Wake Forest graduates had a slightly better knowledge of resources available and found the referral process easier than community physicians. Most responders requested more knowledge about services offered by available community resources but a significant minority requested an easier referral process or more information about the referral process. The next step in the project is to create a guide to the community resources available and the referral process to those resources to be distributed to community Pediatricians and residents in an attempt to increase knowledge and facilitate the referral process." |
This year, Daisuke Kobayashi, a third year resident, was awarded an AAP CATCH Resident Funds grant for his project: "Communication for children with complex needs." His project focuses on the heart of all advocacy, "for every child in every community to have a medical home and other needed services to reach optimal health and wellbeing."
| Daisuke's project will coincide with a larger ongoing advocacy project, headed by Dr. Savithri Nageswaran, one of our pediatric hospitalists. Her larger project focus involves children with complex chronic conditions and the difficulties of coordinating the medical and non-medical services these special patients need. Her project seeks to develop an innovative community-based care coordination program, called the Community-Based Pediatric Enhanced Team (CPECT) by pooling resources from the community. |
AAP CATCH Fund: The Wake Forest Pediatrics Residency Program is doing innovative, cutting-edge training in community health and child advocacy that is likely to benefit children and families both short-term and long-term given that residents care for many vulnerable children and that approximately 50% of the residents tain in pediatrics ultimately remain the community to practice pediatrics. The pediatric residents are concerned, thoughtful, and high caliber. The opportunity and ability to continue to innovate in residency training for community health and child advocacy clearly exists and is one of the program's considerable strengths. |
Our program realizes that pediatric care involves more than the one-on-one interactions in the hospital or clinic. Our faculty are strong advocates and we work to encourage and foster those same beliefs and skills in the residents.
The advocacy project is an opportunity for our residents to take an issue close to their heart and work with others in the community to make real and lasting change for our patient population as a whole. We hope as a result they gain a sense of reward that leads to many other advocacy projects in the future. |
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