Medical Home Initiative

I. Executive Summary

Twenty million American children, living in the wealthiest country in the world, are poor.   Many of them live in isolated rural areas, where unemployment is rampant, and health care providers are few and far between.   Furthermore, rural residents often do not have access to the government policy makers who award federal and state funding that can alleviate inequities.

The Children’s Health Fund (CHF) is committed to providing health care to the nation’s most medically underserved children through innovative primary care medical programs and advocating guaranteed access to appropriate health care for all children.   CHF’s model of care, called a “medical home,” is a partnership between a pediatric clinician, child, and family that gives access to an array of services that are family-centered, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated and culturally effective.   CHF believes that all children deserve this care.

Together, sanofi-aventis and CHF can ensure that each year 6,500 medically underserved children living in remote, impoverished, rural areas have access to comprehensive, culturally competent, and high quality health care by advancing CHF’s Medical Home Initiative.  

With a three-year grant of $1.5 million from sanofi-aventis, The Children’s Health Fund could fully fund the Medical Home Initiative, which will focus upon four Children’s Health Projects within CHF’s National Network serving rural populations, and accomplish the following:

 Support for CHF Children’s Health Projects’ vital clinical services and/or Electronic Health Records (EHR) in Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, and south central Idaho;
 Support critical public policy efforts addressing barriers to the medical home, including a Child Health Forum;
 Provide low-literacy health education materials; and
 Evaluate the outcomes of the Medical Home Initiative and disseminate the findings.

II. Need

America has the highest poverty rate of any... [continues]

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