about the foundation
The Children’s Health Foundation, a 501(c)(3) corporation, was formed in the summer
of 2007 for the purpose of improving health outcomes for children by fostering a
stronger culture of quality improvement within pediatric care through meaningful
change and actionable measures. The Foundation desires to be the means for pediatricians
in our community to improve the quality of care within their practice, to raise
consumer awareness on health issues, and to achieve better children's
health outcomes in the community. The Foundation provides coordinated quality improvement
initiatives, adoption of standards and measures for children's health care as well as education about
those standards and measures. These are accomplished through the Children's Health Alliance's
pediatric community and collaboration with insurers, government, employers, pediatrics and other healthcare
providers.
The Foundation and Children’s Health Alliance share certain members of the Board
of Directors. However, any activity related to the Foundation is for the purpose
of quality improvement, education and the spread of best practices within the community.
Current Foundation Activities
- Educational seminars and training. The Foundation raises awareness
through educational seminars provided to the Children’s Health Alliance pediatric
community on health care topics such as immunizations, quality improvement methods,
asthma education, etc.
- Quality improvement initiatives. The Foundation chooses specific
disease or wellness quality improvement initiatives with the goal of facilitating
a rapid spread of evidenced-based best practices in children’s health care. Currently,
the Foundation is focused on two quality improvement initiatives:
- Asthma (2009-2010) The purpose of this initiative
is to improve the care management of children with asthma. This includes training
and implementation of the 2007 National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Asthma Guidelines
and the development of a web-based registry to track data from the children with
asthma over time and among practices. The goals of this initiative are:
1. To train all Alliance pediatric practices on the 2007 NHLBI guidelines.
2. To build capacity within practices to implement the guidelines by providing tools
and forms to integrate the guidelines into their practice workflows.
3. To increase the number of asthma patients who receive “perfect care” based upon
the NHBLI guidelines.
- Immunization tracking (2008-2010) The Immunization
Tracking Improvement Initiative took place in 2008 and collected baseline data on
two year old immunization rates and the reasons why children are not up to date.
In 2009-2010 the Immunization Rate Improvement Initiative will focus on improving
the immunization rate for two-year olds focusing on processes to improve specific
reasons children are not up to date.
- Developmental Screening (2008) The developmental
screening initiative, developed jointly with the Oregon Pediatric Society and Northwest
Early Childhood Institute, aims to improve the early identification of children
with developmental disorders, and to expedite referral to appropriate community
resources.
The purpose of this initiative was to educate physicians in the indications, administration,
interpretation, and implementation of developmental screening tools within their
practices. Through the joint efforts of the Alliance and the Oregon Pediatric Society,
a training program was developed to educate providers in using specific screening
tools within their practices. Outcome measures include improved physician understanding
of tools, improved referral patterns to community resources such as Early Intervention,
and increase in coding and billing for developmental screening tools.
These activities are funded through grants and donations from government, private
foundations and employers, and health care organizations. If you would like to sponsor
or/and support our activities, please contact the
Executive Director.