Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities

Health Services

The recent Institute of Medicine report Crossing the Quality Chasm highlights the need of an agenda for improving health care in the United States. CHCFC strives to improve access and the quality of children’s health care through analysis that signals key areas for policy and practice reform. CHCFC strives to identify deficiencies in health care content and quality that are universal for children as well as those that show disparities by insurance, income, and race/ethnicity.

Current research focuses on improving the quality of health care for children by building systems of care that recognize children’s unique vulnerabilities. The recent release of the National Academy of Science’s report From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development addresses the importance of early childhood development. Thus a growing focus of CHCFC’s research and policy is evaluating the content and quality of preventive care for children and developing strategies to promote quality of care. Center staff identifies barriers to quality of early childhood health care, and strategies to improve the provision of anticipatory guidance and developmental services. Other projects evaluate the systems of care for children with special health care needs and work with national, state, and local partners to improve systems of care at the family, practice, health plan, and policy levels.

Useful Links

• Crossing the Quality Chasm

• Neurons to Neighborhoods