Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program - Applicant: Erie Family Health Center, Inc. Project Director: Geoyia Nightengale, MPH Needs to be Addressed: For much of our nearly 70-year history, Erie Family Health Center, Inc. (Erie) has invested in Chicagoland’s youth. Today, Erie is a healthcare home for 95,000+ patients across Chicagoland, with almost half under 18 years of age. Further, of Erie’s 17,073 patients between the 12-21 years old, only 55% of Erie’s adolescent patients receive an annual well-child visit and 42% of patients of this age group received recommended screening and referrals for behavioral health concerns. Proposed Services: Erie will leverage our five school-based health centers and youth-focused facilities to enhance our services to underserved adolescents by 1) improving the rates of children’s behavioral health screening and referrals and 2) increasing the rate of adolescent well-child visits. Through cross-departmental, team-based care coordination efforts, we will create and implement new workflows across Erie to positively impact adolescent primary care access and delivery, including increasing behavioral health screenings and internal referrals conducted during the adolescent well-visit. We will align our behavioral health adolescent depression screening protocols and workflows with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Bright Futures guidelines and transitions. We will collaborate with a variety of stakeholders (youth, patients, parents, community members, public health officials, Chicago Public Schools, etc.) to develop a youth-driven outreach program to adolescents in need of primary care. Population Groups: This project will target adolescents 12-21 years old living in Erie’s service area, consisting of diverse Chicago neighborhoods, northern Cook County suburbs, and Northern Lake County, Illinois. The target population consists of both those adolescents who we seek to reengage in primary care through well-visits (lapsed patients), as well as patients assigned to Erie as a medical home through Medicaid, who have not yet come in for care (new patients). This project will be centered in Chicago, where almost 75% of Erie’s 95,389 patients have their medical homes within 10 health centers located in diverse neighborhoods, including five health centers (one specializing in adolescent health) and five school-based health centers embedded within Chicago Public Schools (three high schools and two grade schools). This project’s advisory bodies, the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) and the Community Advisory Board (CAB), grew from our school-based health centers to be representative adolescent health stakeholders.
