Medical Home: Personal Doctor or Nurse
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Understanding the factors contributing to disparities in access to personal doctors or nurses to help develop interventions to improve access for all children.
- Understanding the transition process from pediatric to adult healthcare for CYSHCN and how this transition impacts access to a personal doctor or nurse and identifying strategies to facilitate a smooth transition.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Assessing the impact of telemedicine on increasing access to personal doctors or nurses.
- Deploying mobile health clinics to underserved communities to increase provider availability.
- Empowering parents and caregivers to navigate the health care system and to establish strong provider connections.
- Collaborating with community organizations, schools, and local stakeholders to establish referral networks enabling more children to be cared for by trusted providers.
Medical Home: Usual Source of Sick Care
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Identifying specific factors that contribute to the lack of a usual source of sick care.
- Integrating measures of SDOH into healthcare encounters to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the barriers faced by children in accessing a usual source of sick care.
- Understanding how changes in insurance coverage patterns affect continuity of care and access to a usual source of sick care.
- Exploring the interaction of disability with race, ethnicity, and other demographic factors in accessing a usual source of sick care.
- Understanding factors that have led to increased utilization of urgent care centers and retail health clinics for parents seeking care for their children.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Improving care coordination efforts through patient-facing mobile apps.
- Expanding healthcare coverage and increasing access to primary care providers, particularly for racial and ethnic minority groups, and CYSHCN.
- Enhancing equitable access to telemedicine by sustaining payment for telemedicine and addressing barriers to access in non-metropolitan practices and communities to support a usual source of sick care.
- Equipping healthcare professionals with the resources and training necessary to maintain ongoing relationships with patients.
Methodological Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Exploring the gap in longitudinal studies that examine the stability of insurance coverage over time and its impact on access to care for children with chronic physical illnesses.
Medical Home: Family-Centered Care
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Understanding how parents successfully take up their role as collaborative partners in their child's specialist care.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Assessing the effectiveness of family integrated care bundles with parents as care team members in improving infant outcomes.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of family-centered communication educational interventions using deliberate practice and patient feedback.
- Assessing the effectiveness of parent participation improvement programs.
- Supporting family navigators to provide direct contact related to advocacy, care coordination, community resources, and emotional support for children and families.
- Establishing patient and family advisory councils to enhance service delivery and improve overall quality of FCC.
- Promoting health literacy to assist families in participating in the care of their children.
- Supporting parent-to-parent networks for families to connect and share experiences.
- Integrating FCC content into telehealth visits to facilitate two-way communication.
Methodological Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Conducting more research on the effectiveness of interventions to improve FCC in different contexts, such as neonatal intensive care units.
Medical Home: Referrals
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Understanding the specific barriers that prevent children from completing referrals to necessary services.
- Exploring the disparities in access to specialty services for CYSHCN, particularly in underserved geographic areas and populations.
- Investigating ways to minimize delays in connecting families to necessary services, including improving systems for referral completion and follow-up to ensure timely access to interventions.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Supporting healthcare providers to effectively implement screening protocols, address knowledge gaps, and increase confidence in identifying at-risk children in need of referrals to specialty care.
- Providing training to physicians and caregivers to improve understanding of screening methods and accessing needed referrals.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of collaborative care models that link primary care providers with specialty services to improve the utilization of behavioral health services for children.
- Implementing school-based options to facilitate care coordination and referral access to mental health and community services.
Medical Home: Care Coordination
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Understanding the unique challenges and opportunities in providing care coordination for children with diverse healthcare needs.
- Understanding the full range of family needs and preferences to integrate and prioritize family perspectives in care coordination interventions.
- Exploring how care coordination interventions can be tailored to meet the specific needs of children with diverse healthcare conditions.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Assessing models of interdisciplinary collaboration in care coordination.
- Developing reimbursement mechanisms and payment models to incentivize care coordination.
- Establishing mechanisms for ongoing quality improvement in care coordination.
- Providing training and education to providers on the importance of care coordination and best practices in delivering coordinated care.
- Fostering data sharing and interoperability among different providers, public health agencies, and community organizations to improve care coordination.
Methodological Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Utilizing comparative research methods with control groups to determine the specific impact of care coordination models and interventions on outcomes.
- Developing validated measures of pediatric care coordination to accurately assess the effectiveness of interventions.
- Understanding the generalizability of research findings to ensure that care coordination interventions can be effectively implemented across diverse healthcare settings.
- Validating outcome measures used in care coordination research to ensure their reliability and validity in assessing the impact of care coordination interventions.
- Assessing the long-term impact of care coordination interventions.
- Determining the cost-effectiveness of care coordination programs.
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Examining the impact of social media and online information sources on vaccine hesitancy among parents and adolescents.
- Identifying barriers to vaccination for specific groups, such as rural communities or certain ethnic populations.
- Exploring the effects of vaccination interventions on long-term immunization coverage rates.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Increasing collaboration between state immunization programs and pharmacies, especially in rural areas.
- Developing strategies to improve vaccination rates for children living below the federal poverty line or in rural areas following pandemic-related declines.
- Implementing effective school-based vaccination programs, particularly for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.
- Integrating vaccination efforts with other support services, such as WIC, home visiting programs, and family resource centers.
Methodological Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of vaccination interventions across different populations and settings.
- Assessing the long-term impact of vaccination programs on overall health outcomes.
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Evaluating the impact of nutritional education and awareness programs on household food choices and children's dietary intake.
- Exploring the effectiveness of community-based interventions in improving food security for children.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Implementing policies that address income inequality, and providing income support, to help reduce household food insecurity.
- Utilizing early childhood programs, such as Head Start, to help families develop increased knowledge and skills to support a healthy lifestyle.
- Identifying and addressing structural barriers that contribute to food insufficiency.
Topical Area Knowledge Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Examining lesser-known reasons for homelessness in pregnant women and mothers with children, beyond common factors like domestic violence and evictions.
- Investigating the relationship between gestational age (particularly 32-36 weeks) and increased vulnerability to housing instability.
Specific Intervention Research Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Evaluating the effectiveness of existing support programs for children and pregnant women experiencing homelessness through long-term studies.
- Developing interventions for critical periods during pregnancy and the early postpartum period to prevent housing instability.
- Assessing the impact of integrating housing stability services with prenatal and pediatric care.
Methodological Gaps. Lack of studies on:
- Creating a comprehensive risk assessment tool for early identification of housing instability among pregnant women and children.
- Designing population-based studies to understand the association between housing dynamics and infant health across diverse communities.