Marilyn Crumpton, MD, MPH, Named Pediatrician of the Year
In the greater Cincinnati area, children go to bed hungry. Some have no bed at all. Others are victims of abuse. Or they get shuffled from one relative to another when a parent is unable to care for them.
Marilyn Crumpton, MD, MPH, medical director of School and Adolescent Health at the Cincinnati Health Department, feels their pain. And she’s been trying to ease it since she chose a career in medicine more than 40 years ago.
Crumpton was honored last month at the Cincinnati Pediatric Society’s spring dinner as Pediatrician of the Year.
Don’t be fooled by her charming Southern drawl. Crumpton is a determined and compassionate physician, the daughter of a Methodist minister, who was born and raised in an Alabama coal-mining community.
“I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was in high school,” she says. “I chose public health because the focus is on helping improve the situations others live in.”
She earned her MD from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1974 and completed her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Alabama. Over the next 14 years, she worked for the Department of the Army and served as a county health officer. Along the way, she married a fellow pediatrician and had a daughter and two sons.
When her husband’s job led them to Maryland, she earned her masters of public health at Johns Hopkins University and worked at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health in Annapolis. Then the family moved back to Alabama, where she became associate medical director at the Alabama Medicaid Agency.
In 1996, they traveled north to Cincinnati. Crumpton spent 10 years as a stay-at-home mom, then started working on a grant to improve school-based health services for Interact for Health, an independent nonprofit that serves 20 counties in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. In 2008, she joined the Cincinnati Health Department, working on the same issues. Now she is medical director of the Growing Well program, which coordinates services with the city’s 21 active school-based health centers.
“We meet and share our challenges and the solutions we’ve found,” she says. “We do a lot of problem-solving together.”
It was this collaboration that led to a partnership with Cincinnati Children’s to connect kids with asthma to the medical center’s services. “Dr. Mona Mansour invited us to the table to participate in a Rapid Cycle Improvement Collaborative project,” says Crumpton. “We were able to train enough of our staff so we can use what we learned on our own projects, as well.”
This year, Mansour invited Crumpton to work with her on a community-connected primary care project as part of the 2020 Strategic Plan. “We’re doing a deeper dive into community issues that are impairing children’s health,” Crumpton explains. “Dr. Camille Graham is also working with us and Dr. Sheeba Ayli at the Price Hill Health Center to improve outcomes for kids with asthma. The point is to strengthen the connection with schools and the primary care provider’s office so kids have their medication on hand when they need it.”
Better access means better health
In October 2012, Growing Well opened the first school-based vision center where students can get eye exams and glasses. In addition to myopia, the exams turned up other issues, like double vision and poor coordination of the eye muscles.
“The most common remark we heard from kids was, ‘I didn’t realize I couldn’t see,’” says Crumpton. “They thought the blurred vision they were experiencing was normal.”
In 2013, Crumpton and her team launched a school-based dental clinic, based on the vision center model. It offered cleanings, fluoride varnishes and sealants, as well as fillings, root canals and extractions.
Says Crumpton, “We see a high rate of decay in the primary teeth, which is attributable to poor nutrition and dental hygiene. Last year we had 15,000 visits for dental care, but we’re still seeing a high rate of repeat decay. So we’ve introduced a teeth-brushing program at Oyler School. Our vision is to have an increasing number of students who graduate from school with healthy teeth.”
The school-based health centers provide sports physicals, which was previously a stumbling block for kids in high poverty to participate in sports, as well as physicals for employment. They also reduce the number of ED visits.
“If a child develops a fever in class, the school contacts the family and sends the child to the health center,” says Crumpton. “If it’s something like strep, the nurse can call in a prescription. Then when the parent picks up the child, they get the medicine on the way home and the child can be back at school in 24 hours. We want to make it possible for kids to attend school more consistently.”
According to Crumpton, one of the greatest unmet needs in the community is access to mental health services, especially for kids who are dealing with adverse events related to childhood trauma. The Growing Well program is partnering with MindPeace to develop screening tools and resources where kids can go for care.
Ultimately, Crumpton hopes school-based health centers can help families view healthcare not just as something to access when they’re sick but as a tool to maintain good health and prevent problems before they arise. “I want them to make the connection between healthcare and well-being,” she says. “And with the Affordable Care Act, more people are insured, so they can think about their personal health in ways they never have before.”
Crumpton was honored to be named Pediatrician of the Year, but she insists the credit really goes to her colleagues in the Growing Well program. “I wish you could see the amazing people I work with,” she says. “They inspire me every day.”
