If a family has no means of transportation, consistent prenatal care becomes extremely difficult. If a mother is homeless, she is less likely to attend a child wellness visit. If a one-year-old is hungry, brain development is detrimentally impacted. And if a toddler is experiencing trauma at home, he or she cannot focus on learning. While there is significant evidence around the value of investing in early childhood to improve physical, social, and emotional development later in life, more attention needs to be paid to addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) to improve early childhood outcomes.
Since prenatal services and child wellness visits provide some of the earliest opportunities to intervene with at-risk families, Medicaid is uniquely positioned to identify potential problems and facilitate connections with needed social services. Through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Center for Health Care Strategies’ Medicaid Early Childhood Innovation Lab (Innovation Lab) is exploring ways that Medicaid can align with other early childhood sectors to better address the SDOH needs of high-risk families. This blog post explores opportunities for Medicaid to support families through engaging in cross-sector efforts in education, supportive housing, child welfare, and home visiting.
Crossing the Cultures of Medicaid and Early Childhood Systems
Following are five key strategies for connecting Medicaid and early childhood system supports:
[For more on this story by Alexandra Maul, MPH and Daniela Lewy, EdLD, MPH*, go to https://www.chcs.org/medicaid-...-funding-strategies/]
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