Children's Health Fund

Children’s Health Fund strives to ensure that all children receive the healthcare they deserve
and need to thrive and succeed. Since 1987, Children’s Health Fund has led a national network to bring comprehensive healthcare to children growing up in under-resourced communities and advocates for the health and well-being of all children. From South Central LA, to Clarksdale, MI, to the South Bronx, NY, to Puerto Rico, our National Network of 25 partner programs and fleet of 50 mobile medical units have provided care to hundreds of thousands of children in poverty at schools, Head Start centers, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and community health center locations. In addition to ensuring access to healthcare, CHF works to reduce health barriers to learning in schools in disadvantaged communities, brings the needs of children to local and national policy debates, and responds to the needs of children impacted by public health crises. Please see www.childrenshealthfund.org

Each year, Children’s Health Fund establishes goals and objectives to expand access to comprehensive health care for children in poverty. It’s leadership team, along with the Medical Affairs, Healthy and Ready to Learn (HRL), and National Programs staff assess previous year’s accomplishments and establish new goals for the following year.
CHF works with our National Network partner programs, all of whom are affiliated with local children’s hospitals, academic medical centers or federally qualified health centers, to determine objectives and expectations for the year. Then, throughout the year, the Medical Affairs and National Program staff provide technical assistance and program support via regular calls and site visits. As funding is identified for support of the urban and rural programs in the National Network, CHF staff ensures implementation of grant deliverables and support for data collection and monitoring of the mobile clinic programs and other innovative models to help meet the goals and objectives that will increase access to high quality health care for children in poverty. https://www.childrenshealthfund.org/projects/
More recently, CHF has established the Healthy and Ready to Learn initiative that seeks to mitigate “health barriers to learning” that negatively impact learning and academic success. By working in elementary schools with educators, families, and health staff, CHF continues to develop a 3-tiered framework that addresses 6 specific health barriers to learning including unmet vision and hearing problems, unmanaged asthma, mental and behavioral health concerns, dental pain and hunger. Using a coordinated school-based health model, HRL has been able to address unmet health needs in children at school and is working to expand the reach of our work to more students and families through our Healthy and Ready to Learn Resource and Training Center. www.hrl.nyc
In addition, each year, CHF holds 2 conferences to bring together the leadership of the National Network and HRL programs in order to share best practices, introduce innovations in care and provide technical assistance which supports improved quality and capacity building.

The national office of Children’s Health Fund has over 40 staff experienced in health care delivery, program development, evaluation, advocacy, communications, development and administration who support CHF’s mission. Beyond the staff in our central office, CHF extends its reach and capacity through formal partnerships with our National Programs partners. For example, in 2017, CHF-supported programs employed 489 clinical and non-clinical staff who provided comprehensive medical home care and health education to children and families living in poverty.

CHF has significant capabilities and capacity for disseminating our work and sharing our learnings. Notably, in 2017, CHF staff and supported programs trained a total of 602 medical residents and medical and health professional students and had 52 presentations including invited conference presentations and oral/poster presentations at local, regional, and national professional meetings. CHF National Network program faculty gave 12 grand rounds presentations and co-authored seven publications in peer-reviewed journals.

We have a 30+ year track record of successfully battling barriers to health care access for America’s most underserved children with passion and dedication. From inception, CHF promoted a Medical Home Model of health care. This model delivers comprehensive primary care services, including acute care, chronic disease management, specialty care, care coordination, case management, preventive care and health education. Today, 91% of CHF’s National Network provide primary care, 83% provide health education, 78% provide mental health counseling, 43%provide dental services, and 17% provide direct subspecialty care. Our partner programs deliver this comprehensive, patient-centered care at fixed-site and mobile clinics across the nation. Most (87%) have a mobile clinic, including medical, dental, and mental health units which visited over 400 different service sites in 2018. The majority (78%) of programs provide case management so that patients requiring referrals to community organizations can connect with needed resources such as housing, food, and legal assistance. Our goal is to expand the depth and reach of our programs to ensure delivery of essential health care services to tens of thousands of homeless and disadvantaged children and family members in 16 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Because of our holistic, strengths-based view of thriving, CHF’s programming goes beyond access to health care to include community-based health education, capacity-building activities for schools, technical assistance and training of health and educational professionals, policy advocacy and broader education of the professional, governmental, and lay communities. Our goal is for children to be not only healthy but also successful in school. we want all children to have the opportunity to develop into engaged and productive citizens. We recognize that social determinants of health play a huge role in the wellbeing of children and families. As such, there is an increased focus on identifying and managing psychosocial stressors that create barriers to health and well-being