October 25, 2016

102716starkidsinside350Three years ago, Jessica Coker of Willis, Texas, gave birth to her son, Christopher. Unbeknownst to Coker during her pregnancy, Christopher would be born with various medical issues. Christopher has apert (a cranio facial syndrome) and a heart murmur. He also relies on a trach and has, at times, needed a feeding tube.

After delivering her baby, the new mom was suddenly faced with needing to learn how to care for a child who would have very complex needs, as well as how to manage the comprehensive care he would need from more than two dozen specialists. Just in his first week of life, Christopher had 17 doctor’s appointments. As a newborn, Christopher was transferred to Texas Children’s and had a team of doctors here taking care of him, successfully treating some of his issues and managing others.

Today, the toddler still sees about 24 doctors at Texas Children’s and other medical facilities near his family’s home in Willis. He’s doing well, because he is receiving excellent care – and because his mother has created a system to manage and coordinate his complex care.

“We currently have great access to care,” Coker said. “I can call doctors directly, and they do a fantastic job when I need them the most. It’s a team approach that we’ve worked hard to establish.”

Coker’s fortunate to have figured out a system to manage her son’s care. Learning to advocate for and manage the care of children with complex medical needs is often critical to their ability to thrive and realize a decent quality of life. Beginning November 1, STAR Kids will provide the support these families need, and Texas Children’s Health Plan is leading the way. Last year, the Health Plan was selected by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission as one of three managed care organizations offering the STAR Kids plan in Harris, Jefferson and Northeast service areas.

“The STAR Kids contract allows the Health Plan to increase its reach to about 40,000 new children and teens in 54 counties,” said Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark Wallace. “These children see multiple specialists and therapists, and many receive home care services. They typically see at least one physician every week.

“Coordination and management of care is essential for these children. It helps prevent children with significant intellectual development disabilities or complex medical problems from falling through the gaps and provides a structure where their progress can be followed throughout the system.”

While many of the children transitioning into STAR Kids already are Texas Children’s patients, we expect thousands more to become part of the Texas Children’s system through enrollment in STAR Kids. In preparation for this patient volume, the Health Plan has already hired nearly 300 care coordinators.

“It is the strong partnership between the care coordinators and the families that will make this feel different even for the families already in the system,” said Texas Children’s Vice President Diane Scardino. “These care coordinators are registered nurses and certified social workers who will bring much needed support to families who are managing care for their children in what can sometimes be an incredibly complex system.

“They will visit with families, assess their children’s needs and develop care plans to address those needs. Texas Children’s will provide the resources around care coordination and home based services, creating a much more robust system of care for them.”

STAR Kids’ new care model is a huge step in supporting the unique needs of patients and their families, and improving their access to health care services, while also reducing preventable events or unnecessary visits to the hospital or care provider. There are about 180,000 children across Texas eligible for the STAR Kids program, with about 40,000 expected to be enrolled in Texas Children’s Health Plan.

“Texas Children’s is proud to be a part of this program that will mean so much to help so many families throughout Texas,” Wallace said. “This program and the work we will do to help ensure these families’ needs are met and that their children receive the best possible care speaks to our mission. This is what Texas Children’s has always done.”

Information about STAR Kids

FAQs about STAR Kids and Texas Children’s involvement
STAR Kids information on Texas Children’s Health Plan website
Texas Health and Human Services website

October 18, 2016

12016HoustonMarathon640Want to achieve a personal fitness goal and help preserve the mission of Texas Children’s Hospital? Runners can still enter the sold out 2017 marathon and half marathon races through the Chevron Houston Marathon’s Run for a Reason charity program.

Texas Children’s Hospital is an official charity for the Houston Marathon and Half Marathon, taking place on Sunday, January 15, 2017. The Run for a Reason program is a way for runners to run the race of their choice with a guaranteed entry – on behalf of a charity.

Running for Texas Children’s Hospital is not just about the race, it’s a promise to our patients. By signing up to run and fundraise on behalf of Texas Children’s Hospital, your donations will directly impact the lives of countless children. Your race will become the race for our patients who are too sick – sometimes too sick even to play outside. Your support will allow us to expand our care to even more children who need our help.

Make your promise and join the Texas Children’s Running Team today!

1. Fundraise to Run
A fundraising entry is a way for runners to secure a guaranteed entry to the race of their choice while fundraising for Texas Children’s Hospital.

The minimum fundraising milestone to receive the guaranteed entry for the full marathon is $750 and for the half marathon is $500. Please complete this form and email it to Eileen Condit in the Office of Development at runforareason@texaschildrens.org to sign up and secure your registration.

Donations will be received through February 2017. These donations can come from friends, family and employer matching programs.

2. Support the Team
To support the Texas Children’s running team with a donation, please visit our fundraising page.

Questions?
Please contact Eileen Condit at Ext. 4-6823 or runforareason@texaschildrens.org.

October 11, 2016

The Texas Children’s Hospital October 2 Kids Day game against the Tennessee Titans was a huge success with the Houston Texans raking in a victory while Texas Children’s employees attending the event enthusiastically cheered for their hometown football team.

Twenty-five employees who won a pair of tickets via the Employee Health and Wellness Go for the Gold challenge sat near the end zone whooping and hollering at each and every play. Another 50 employees – many of whom were recently selected as the 2017 Catalyst Award winners (to be officially announced later this month) – enjoyed the game from a suite also near the end zone.

The tickets to the game are one of the benefits of Texas Children’s Hospital being the official children’s hospital of the Houston Texans football team. Texas Children’s and the Texans launched a seven-year partnership last season to inspire children to lead healthier, more active lives.

“The experience all around was amazing,” said Cynthia Alegria, one of the Go for the Gold ticket winners and an administrative supervisor in the Pathology Department. “Because of the hospital’s generosity, I was able to spend some real quality time with my husband and enjoy some well-deserved down time.”

During the football game, the Texas Children’s logo could be seen on several screens throughout NRG Stadium. One shot was of a boy wearing one of the 20,000 pairs of eye blacks that were passed out to young fans as they walked into the game. The eye blacks sported the hospital’s logo. See photos from the game below.

“I saw the red Texas Children’s Hospital eye ‘stickers’ everywhere walking around the stadium and on the big screen,” said Executive Vice President Mark Mullarkey. “This was a fantastic way to reinforce our partnership with the Texans and what we are doing with the football team in the community.”

Mullarkey was the honorary coin toss captain and got to go out onto the field prior to the game with his family and with Infection Prevention and Control Department Medical Director Dr. Judith Campbell and her husband. The group stayed on the field and helped present $50,000 in PLAY 60 grants to six local schools: Southmore Intermediate (Pasadena ISD), Cornerstone Academy & Academy of Choice (Spring Branch ISD), J.C. Mitchell Elementary School (HISD), Attucks Middle School (HISD), Westbury High School (HISD) and Blackshear Elementary (HISD).

PLAY 60 is the National Football League’s campaign to encourage kids to be active for 60 minutes a day in order to help reverse the trend of childhood obesity. Nearly 80 local schools applied for the grants, which are worth up to $10,000, to help purchase the equipment they need to get kids moving throughout the school day and in after-school programs. Five of the schools selected for grants are Title I and all have demonstrated a commitment to getting kids active and on the path to developing healthy habits that will last a lifetime. In the four years of the program, the Texans have awarded $170,000 in PLAY 60 grants to local schools for PLAY 60 projects.

For more details about the hospital’s partnership with the Texans click here.

October 4, 2016

10516bipai640A program of Baylor College of Medicine International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI), Texas Children’s Hospital and Chevron to improve health outcomes in a remote region of Colombia recently was awarded for its impact in the South American country.

Launched in January 2014, the initiative is based in La Guajira, one of the Colombia’s most impoverished states with a large indigenous community and high child and maternal mortality rates. Called SAIL (Salud y Autosuficiencia Indígenas en La Guajira), the program is a public-private partnership of Chevron, the central and departmental governments of Colombia, the state of La Guajira, and the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation-Colombia, an affiliate non-government organization of BIPAI. Currently, it is BIPAI’s only program in South America.

The SAIL program received a National Nutrition Award from the Exito Foundation, the charitable arm of Exito, Colombia’s largest retailer, in the category of Promoción Nutrición Materno Infantil – 1,000 days (advancing maternal-child nutrition in the first 1,000 days from conception). The award was presented at a ceremony September 7 in Bogota, Colombia.

“The early success of our program in Colombia is a reflection of BIPAI’s commitment to public-private partnership. We view ourselves as an extension of government’s public health programs. We aim to be complementary and never in conflict or competition with the good work others are doing.” said Dr. Mark W. Kline, chair and professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and physician-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital.

“SAIL is a strategic initiative that enables comprehensive, locally driven health solutions for the Wayuu community. The program is being implemented in a very challenging environment, but we are witnessing impressive results,” said Ali Moshiri, president of Chevron Africa and Latin America Exploration and Production Company. “The National Nutrition Award is a recognition of this effort, but the real award is the potential and the opportunities for Wayuu mothers and children.”

“It’s a crowning achievement for our program to be honored in the area of nutrition, because very early on we recognized that in order to improve health in the region, we had to do something about the issue of malnutrition,” said Dr. James Thomas, professor of pediatrics at Baylor who leads the program for BIPAI. “There is a staggering amount of malnutrition in La Guajira.”

Forty percent of children have some form of malnutrition, Thomas said. It is one of the primary contributing factors to the high rate of mortality in children under age 5. Under 5 mortality and maternal mortality are two to four times higher in La Guajira than the national average, he said.

For the program to reach its goal of decreasing these high rates of child and maternal morbidity and mortality rates, Thomas and his colleagues knew they would have to take a different approach than the traditional Center of Excellence-based health care that has proven successful in BIPAI programs in sub-Saharan Africa. La Guajira is a desert region in northern Colombia, where its indigenous people, the Wayuu, live in remote settlements of open-air huts. They are a nomadic people, and their settlements are not easily accessible to one another or to the larger towns and cities in La Guajira where health care facilities are located.

A mobile health care platform was the best solution. Complemented initially by a BIPAI Global Health Corp pediatrician, a team of Guajirans was assembled, with the most critical members being nine indigenous women who were viewed as community leaders in their matrilineal society and had some healthcare experience. They received additional training focused on the integrated management of childhood illness. The team has expanded and now includes an OB-GYN and general practitioner. Leading the program on the ground in Colombia is executive director Dr. Ana Maria Galvis, who accepted the Exito award from First Lady of Colombia Maria Clemencia de Santos.

The team’s first step was to collect baseline data from the 172 Wayuu communities. This included weighing and measuring children, getting a basic health history and identifying at-risk patients.

In the first year of the program, more than 700 malnourished children were identified and treated by the interdisciplinary team who visited the rural settlements regularly. These efforts were boosted by a partnership with the Exito Foundation, which provides supplementary feeding for the indigenous Wayuu communities in the municipality of Manaure. At-risk families received a monthly food package, including items that are culturally accepted by the Wayuu community, until their malnourishment was reversed and they were no longer considered at risk. The Exito Foundation has placed an emphasis on eliminating malnutrition in Colombia by 2025.

Thomas emphasized the importance of providing treatment for malnutrition and other health care in the local community. “We knew that trying to provide treatment in health centers would not be effective,” he said. “It’s an incredible hardship on mothers and children to go to a clinic or hospital, in many cases requiring a four to five hour walk and leaving behind other children. Instead, we wanted to focus on identifying people in the early stages of disease in their own community.”

Other elements of the SAIL program include health fairs that have been conducted in numerous Wayuu communities and training sessions for health care workers in hospitals in the larger towns, where the main topic covered was identifying and treating malnutrition. The addition of an OB-GYN to the mobile health care team who provides check-ups during pregnancy has allowed the program to focus on the reduction of maternal mortality rates. Recent efforts in the area of maternal health have also focused on family planning. Wayuu women often have as many as eight or nine children, contributing to the issue of malnutrition, so family planning can have a direct impact on child health.

“When a mother dies not only is it an absolute tragedy for the family but is also an unsustainable loss for the community and country. The partnership in Colombia is a very real way to address maternal mortality and morbidity in the region, and addresses key aspects of obstetrics and prenatal care,” said Dr. Michael Belfort, chair and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor and obstetrician/gynecologist-in-chief at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. “We are already seeing tangible evidence of improved maternal care with our ultrasound and other educational programs that allow early diagnosis and treatment of problem pregnancies. It is a great pleasure to be able to help the remarkable team of Colombian physicians and nurses in this amazing project.”

Thomas acknowledged that addressing malnutrition has been a bigger piece of the health care puzzle in La Guajira than anticipated. By improving this health care concern, the focus can turn to other causes of disease.

More than 3,400 patients have already been directly seen through the program, and more than 300 health professionals have received training. Galvis expects its impact to continue since it was designed to be sustainable thanks to the involvement of the La Guajiran people. “It’s really their program, and this makes sense because it’s for their community,” she said.

Each success of the program is gratifying, Thomas said, but nothing is more gratifying than the opportunity to help the Wayuu people.

“There is a depth of personality in these people,” he said. “They are tapped into a traditional wisdom and belief system that has been there for centuries.”

10516qualityday640On September 16, more than 50 projects were featured at the 2016 Texas Children’s Quality Day event, “Leading Tirelessly, Always Improving: Celebrating Quality, Safety, and Process Improvement Innovations at Texas Children’s and Advanced Quality Improvement (AQI) 14 Graduation.”

Held at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women Conference Center, this special day was organized by the Quality Education Team and other Texas Children’s quality leaders. The event included presentations on exciting improvement initiatives implemented by the graduates of the AQI 14 class and showcased the many improvement projects/programs developed by staff and leaders across the organization.

“I am truly amazed and inspired to work with such a talented organization,” said Dana Danaher, director of Quality Education, Collaboratives and Advocacy at Texas Children’s. “I am privileged to facilitate building ongoing improvement capability for long-term sustainability.”

Chief Quality Officer Angelo Giardino kicked off the event with an inspirational keynote to the audience of more than 80 attendees. In recognition of the Daily Operational Briefing (DOB), a culture-changing safety practice adopted by Texas Children’s in November 2015, he presented a special quality award to Dr. Lane Donnelly, Dr. Joan Shook and recently retired Texas Children’s COO Randy Wright for their leadership in supporting the implementation of the DOB.

Following this motivational opening, the recent graduates of the AQI program presented their projects. Examples of some of the improvements discussed included:

  • MyChart activation
  • Discharge readiness
  • Improving isolation compliance
  • Postpartum depression screening
  • Reduction of medication re-dispenses

With more than 400 AQI graduates trained over the seven years that Texas Children’s has offered this valuable education, Giardino says Texas Children’s has great capacity to continue leading tirelessly to improve quality.

“The privilege of getting this training comes with a responsibility to use this new knowledge and the skills to do quality improvements to make things better for the women and children that we seek to serve,” Giardino said.

September 20, 2016

92116laceup4life640On September 9, Texas Children’s Hospital hosted the fourth annual Lace Up 4 Life inpatient walk in honor of National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Patients and staff on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit participated in the walk on the inpatient and outpatient floor to raise awareness for Be The Match®, the largest and most diverse bone marrow registry in the world.

Patients on the unit are immunocompromised and were able to participate in the walk in a way that is safe as they undergo treatment. Each year, thousands of children are diagnosed with blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma, sickle cell anemia or other life-threatening diseases. Seventy percent of people do not have a donor in their family and depend on Be The Match® Registry to find a match to save their life.

With a rotating disco ball projecting an array of bright colors on the walls of the unit, the Bone Marrow Transplant staff pumped up the crowd with high energy music while patient families and staff waved flags and cheered on our courageous patients as they crossed the finish line.

The inpatient walk preceded the first annual Lace Up 4 Life Walk/Run in Sugar Land on September 10 where Bone Marrow Transplant staff, patients and their families teamed up to represent Texas Children’s Hospital.

Texas Children’s Bone Marrow Transplant team dubbed “Team Transplantors” raised funds to support the Gulf Coast Marrow Donor Program and to raise awareness about childhood cancer. The donations will support patients who need a marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant to find a donor and receive treatment.

One of the most touching moments at the event was when a patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant at Texas Children’s met her bone marrow donor for the first time. Click here to watch the ABC-13 video. (It is the second video in the link.)

September 13, 2016

91416texans640To celebrate their first game of the season against the Chicago Bears, the Houston Texans hosted a party Friday for patients and families at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Held in the Child Life Zone on the 16th floor of West Tower, the party was filled with all sorts of fun, including sports-themed arts and crafts, goodie giveaways and visits from Texans cheerleaders Natalie and Taylor, and Texans ambassadors J.J. Moses and Eric Brown.

“This is amazing,” 11-year-old Alejandro Montelongo said as he walked into the room filled with activity. “I’ve never met an actual Texans player before.”

Sandwiched between Brown and Moses, Alejandro grinned for a photographer and proceeded to get the former football players’ autographs before moving on to the arts and crafts table where he made a sports wreath and a paper Texans football helmet.

Justin Mangham meanwhile threw on a pair of Texans socks that were part of the goodies offered at the event and waited patiently to get a photograph with Brown, Moses and the Texans cheerleaders. Mangham got a photo and an autograph from the players, something he hasn’t let out of his sight since.

When asked to describe the season kickoff event, Justin enthusiastically yelled, “Great!”

Texans Cheerleader Natalie said the event was her second on behalf of the team at Texas Children’s Hospital and that she too thought it was great.

“It is so good to be back,” Natalie said in between squeezing babies’ cheeks and doing whatever she can to get a laugh out of them. “I love putting a smile on the faces of these kids.”

The Texans had a reason to smile on Sunday after defeating the Bears 23 to 14. The team’s next game is at noon Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs.