Children and Family Focused Food is Medicine Programs
Food insecurity, sometimes called low or very low food security, is a leading cause of health related issues among Americans. While inflation nationally has contributed to higher food costs, the minimum wage in Massachusetts has not changed since January 2023, at $15 an hour. In recent years, initiatives have been put in place to combat food insecurity to […]
2023 Child Health Equity Summit
Join us for the 2023 Child Health Equity Summit. The mission of the Child Health Equity Center is to advance child health equity locally, nationally, and globally — particularly for children who have been most disadvantaged by poverty and systemic racism — through novel and groundbreaking research and programs that transform healthcare systems and public […]
Understanding & Addressing Child Trauma
The Collaborative Problem-Solving model (CPS) emphasizes “children do well because they can.” This contrasts with the more common belief that “children do well because they want to” (Massachusetts General Hospital, 2021). When this model was first introduced to me as a Mental Health Specialist (MHS), I did not understand the importance of these words. It […]
Grant to Provide Transportation
The Child Health Equity Center is excited to announce a grant received from the CVS Health Foundation Hometown Fund. This grant will support our work to promote transportation for pediatric patients at UMass Memorial’s Children’s Medical Center. Transportation to medical appointments can be difficult for families without access to a car or money for gas. […]
Preterm Birth
$26 billion. You can purchase a lot with $26 billion: 74 billion twinkies, 108,565 average sedans, or 26 billion cans of Arizona Iced Tea. For Americans, $26 billion is the amount of money spent annually on preterm birth. Many factors go into having a preterm birth, such as genetics, prenatal care, and environmental conditions. But […]
Child Health Equity Center Receives National Institutes of Health Award to Study the Impact of SDOH Screening in NICU
Child Health Equity Center Receives $3.5M National Institutes of Health (NIH) Award to Study the Impact of SDOH Screening in Neonatal Intensive Care Units The National Institutes of Health has awarded $3.5M to UMass Chan’s Child Health Equity Center for a project aiming to improve infant health by standardizing the practice of screening for social […]
Examining Climate Change
Examining Climate Change as a Social Determinant of Health and Strategies to Address It An article published in 2020, “Climate Change as a Social Determinant of Health” by Maya I. Ragavan, MD, MPH, MS; Lucy E. Marcil, MD, MPH; and Arvin Garg, MD, MPH, highlights the urgent and critical need to define climate change as […]
Racial Disparities in Human Milk Consumption Among Very Low Birth Weight Infants
Meg Parker, MD, MPH, Child Health Equity Center Core Faculty, and colleagues recently published findings from a study of nearly 350,000 very low birth weight (VLBW) infants that revealed an 8% increase in provision of human milk at hospital discharge over the 10-year study period; however, gains were smaller and disparities widened among non-Hispanic Black […]
Addressing Social Determinants of Health in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
New research led by Meg Parker, MD, MPH, Child Health Equity Center Core Faculty, found that Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) across the U.S. are inconsistent in how they address adverse social determinants of health among patients and families and that few NICUs are actively screening for social determinants of health. Study of Social Determinants […]
Reducing Barriers to Care to Increase Access to Well-Child Visits
Child Health Equity Center Core Faculty members Arvin Garg, MD, MPH, and Alison LeBlanc, MS, PMP, recently co-authored with colleagues an article that promotes adherence to well-child visits within the UMass Memorial Health safety-net healthcare system. This project was the first recipient of the Bernard J. Tyson National Award for Excellence in Pursuit of Healthcare […]