Making the Case for Better Child Health Care
A new Child Policy Research Center will give policymakers and others evidence-based information about effective strategies to improve quality and eliminate disparities in children’s health care.
Making the quality of children’s health care matter to policymakers and the public matters a great deal to Lisa Simpson, MB, BCh, MPH, a pediatrician and the director of the center.
Childhood Obesity a Focus
The Child Policy Research Center will give policymakers solid data on which to base decisions about health care inequities.
The center’s evidence comes from research conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and from state and national data. Dr. Simpson explains how this works with one of the center’s priorities, childhood obesity.
“We look at classic epidemiological studies, and after exploring basic epidemiological patterns, dig deeper, asking questions about patterns of prevalence of obesity and disparities. Are these patterns associated with availability of health care resources? This brings in questions of system capacity, and how the system is responding to those needs,” Simpson says.
Childhood obesity meets criteria Dr. Simpson describes as the three “I”s — impact, improvability, and inclusiveness. Obesity has a huge impact on children and evidence shows that a policy change could result in improvement. Obesity is also inclusive, cutting across population and economic groups.
Dr. Simpson points out that the center does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of the health services research matrix developed to create collaboration across divisions, centers and programs. It collaborates with policy research centers in other states.
Beyond Advocacy
“What distinguishes us is that we are focusing on quality and transformation,” Dr. Simpson says. “You really can change the system to be a higher performing system for children and that is what we are learning here at Cincinnati Children’s.”
The Center provided the first of a series of briefing papers on evidencebased information at the end of February, focused on state health insurance programs, and targeted to policymakers.
