The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), with support from the Health Resources and Services Administration Maternal and Child Health Bureau, is working to identify promising practices that enhance access to pediatric care via telehealth during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Promising practices can focus on all pediatric populations, including a special focus on the following populations:
- Children and adolescents with mental and behavioral health conditions
- Adolescents and young adults
- Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN), including those with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities, and children with medical complexity
- Children, adolescents, and their families/caregivers living in rural areas
All identified promising practices are encouraged to highlight how access to care may be improved via telehealth for underserved populations utilizing a medical home approach. For the purposes of this project, the AAP is defining underserved populations as any population experiencing disparities in access to care.
These promising practices are intended to be practical replicable strategies that pediatric clinicians can quickly implement within their delivery of telehealth care. Identified promising practices will be published through the Academy’s Telehealth Playbook on AAP.org.
Using the framework below, identify promising practices for your specific area of expertise (CYSHCN, adolescent health, behavioral/mental health, rural and underserved communities). In alignment with the overall grant goal of increasing access to care for all children, please keep in mind the importance of replicability of the practices identified, and strategies utilized within each practice to promote health equity.
Preliminary findings from the project’s needs assessments demonstrate that many pediatric clinicians and practices have rapidly begun to implement telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, many practical strategies and tips for implementing telehealth may be in the preliminary pilot phase of implementation. While this project aims to highlight outcomes and evaluation findings as much as possible through identified promising practices, we also recognize that not all practices may have outcomes at this stage in the pandemic.
Please submit the framework for each identified promising practices by 2/15/2021 to Erin Weil at eweil@aap.org. Please contact Erin Weil eweil@aap.org with any questions.