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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Teddy Milder, RN PHN PNP¹, Deborrah Bremond, Phd², and Chris Hwang, MPA MAIS¹. (1) Evaluation and Technology, First 5 Alameda County, 1100 San Leandro Blvd. Suite 120, San Leandro, CA 94577, 510-875-2430, teddy.milder@acgov.org, (2) Family Support Services, First 5 Alameda County, 1100 San Leandro Blvd. Suite 120, San Leandro, CA 94577

In 1998, California voters passed The California Children and Families First Act, creating an unprecedented opportunity for improving the health and well-being of children 0 to 5 years and their families through funding from a tobacco tax. First 5 Alameda County became the first Commission in the state to approve its strategic plan, Every Child Counts (ECC). One ECC goal is to improve the development, behavioral health, and school readiness of young children. To promote the early identification of young children with developmental concerns, ECC utilized a multi-pronged strategy to implement a county-wide system that promotes best practices for child development screening. Strategies included partnering with the county public health department, the local Children's Hospital, pediatric offices, community-based agencies and child care providers to increase awareness about performing developmental screening with a standardized tool. Methods for implementing this systems change approach will be described including increasing provider capacity through multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural trainings on child development; developing standards for developmental screening by automating the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) in a web-based cross-agency case-management system; increasing the number of children screened by implementing Healthy Steps developmental specialists in pediatric offices, providing developmental screening at home visits by family advocates and by child development specialists and mental health consultants at child care centers. As a result of this effort, more children in Alameda County are screened with the ASQ and referred for services if indicated. Results and lessons learned from five years of implementing this successful community-wide approach will be presented.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Identify potential benefits of developing a community-wide system for developmental screening of young children
• Describe a community-wide systems change effort that promotes best practices for developmental screening of young children
• Identify the components of a multi-pronged strategy to implement a community-wide system for developmental screening of young children
• Identify outcome and performance measures that can be used to assess the effectiveness of community child developmental screening
• Describe the results obtained from five years of implementing this system-wide collaborative approach utilized by Alameda County, California

Keywords: Community Planning, Child Health

Related Web page: www.acgov.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation