CINCINNATI (WKRC) - A new study by doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital finds hospital stays are down 20 percent for children living in two of Cincinnati’s poorest neighborhoods. Doctors attribute the decrease to more community involvement and specialized care. The disparity for hospital stays for children in Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods is dramatic. In Avondale, kids are five times more likely to have a hospital stay than kids living in Hyde Park.
“We think one of the main roots is poverty,” said Dr. Andrew Beck, a pediatrician at Children’s. “I think there are several challenges many neighborhoods in our own backyard face that predispose certain children, certain families, certain households."
That’s why Dr. Beck and social worker Kristy Anderson are working to reduce the amount of time Cincinnati kids spend in hospitals.
“We need to address where our families are. They are living in poverty that then impacts their trajectory of where they're going to go. Are they going to complete school? Are they going to get jobs? Are they going to have healthy lives?" said Anderson.
To reduce the rate of hospital stays, Anderson and Dr. Beck focused on specialized care for children living in Avondale and Price Hill. The approach is three-fold.
“We’ve been able to engineer our system such that whenever a child from Avondale or Price Hill is hospitalized, a multidisciplinary team hears about it in realtime and is able to think about what might have been preventable so as to learn for future cases,” said Dr. Beck.
That’s on the in-patient side. On the out-patient side, some parents are now connected to support services.
“Like community health workers, social service agencies, legal aid support,” said Anderson.
Then there's also community outreach.
Two weeks ago, Local 12 told you about the Care Families Reading Bear group, which strives to increase literacy rates. Anderson says reading is connected to healthy living.
“We get a child ready and excited to read, then they're ready to go to kindergarten and they will succeed. Then they will complete the third grade, the promise. Then they have an increased chance of graduating, then jobs. That trajectory gets them on a path where they will be successful, and all of those things impact your ongoing health,” said Anderson.
Which can then break the cycle of poverty while also decreasing death rates.
Anderson and Dr. Beck say expect to see more programs like Reading Bears to address the health disparity, but Dr. Beck says the work can't stop there.
“We also must think about what drives those huge differences between Avondale and Hyde Park to begin with, and, unless we do both, we're going to keep chasing our tails,” said Dr. Beck.
0 Comments