Hello, I thought I would post a little bit about the Health Starts at Home project we have began in West Virginia and some of the tools we are providing to parents.
Our project is in a federally qualified health center and is aimed at screening for ACEs in children and prenatal patients. We are hoping to capture patients and children who have experienced 4 or more ACEs and provide information, education and resources to alleviate the effects of the toxic stress ACEs cause.
In terms of anticipatory guidance or patient materials, every person screened receives a "Strong Families" booklet that explains the Protective Factors. It has been graciously provided by a local organization called TEAM for WV Children who oversees our Strengthening Families initiative in WV. You can learn more at https://teamwv.org/strengtheni...thening-families-wv/ Unfortunately, I don't have an electronic copy of the booklet. Every pregnant patient or parent of a child under 12 receives the ACES handout, which is attached. We re-designed part of Spokane Washington's ACE handout to fit WV families. Youth over 13 who are screened receive a half page handout called Overcoming Adversity, which is attached. We designed this resource in house.
For patients who screen with 4 or more ACEs, they receive the resilience survey and additional materials that I have downloaded from the Baucomb Alaska ACEs Coalition, National Institute of Mental Health What is Stress handout, materials on positive parenting from the CDC and Bright futures, additional materials from CSSP's parent translations of protective factors, copies of articles, basically whatever I think they need at the time, depending on what is going on in their lives. We are thinking about using the AAP Resilience project parent posters in our bathrooms and exam rooms to reinforce the messaging as well as have been donated materials purchased from https://gsc.mitchellgraphics.com/ for overall messaging.
I pretty much read every article, listen to various podcasts, and have ordered several books on the subjects of resilience, post traumatic growth, and brain science so that I can coach and guide patients as well.
My ultimate goal is to get pregnant patients and small children's families engaged in home visiting so that they can receive on-going support, child development information and resilience building support. For the families with older children, it is a little bit harder to connect them with longer term support resources.
My "preferred" goal is to offer parent to parent peer support groups to accompany and supplement therapy our practice offers. However, we are still getting the screening and referral process smoothed out so this kind of support can be explored later on. If you are thinking of peer to peer parent support groups, Circle of Parents is a great resource.
I'm also trying to come up with a social media plan and propose a section of our health center's website to ACEs information and resources. Knowing how much is enough information will need patient input. Personally, I like the design of www.stresshealth.org though and reference it on our parent handout.
I'd love to hear this community's thoughts and opinions on our materials, my goals - do parents want this kind of resources at their doctor's office?
Comments (0)