Priority Need: Promote Developmental Screenings Among Children

NPM 6: Developmental Screening for Children

Percent of children, ages 9 through 35 months, who received a developmental screening using a parent-completed screening tool in the past year

NPM 6 Strategies:

6.1a  Develop a Physician Outreach campaign to increase the number of providers utilizing standardized developmental screening and supportive services available through Public Health (e.g., BCW, Children 1st, CMS, EHDI, Home Visiting, HMG®.

6.1b Provide feedback on referrals to all referral sources to encourage care coordination and future referrals.

6.2a Provide 10 total trainings annually via the state office to community partners and provider practices through collaborative partnerships with medical and maternal and child health agencies.

6.2b Make the ASQ available to parents online.

6.2c Work with the Home Visiting program to produce a protocol to increase the number of de-duplicated developmental screenings.

Children 1st

The Children 1st program will continue to promote developmental screening and developmental milestones to families and community partners during home visits, outreach activities, and back to school events and will focus on providing outreach and education to select physician offices and community partners to increase developmental screening within their facilities. The state office will work collaboratively with the local public health workforce to identify physician offices in their communities that do not include developmental screenings results with referrals to public health programs. Champions from medical societies, including the GA-AAP and the GAFP, will be engaged to help facilitate the delivery of outreach to physicians. Through partnership with key leaders in the local public health workforce, select programs will receive education about developmental screening and will develop strategies to incorporate developmental screening into their protocols.

MCH programs will work collaboratively to streamline internal opportunities to increase developmental screening of young children and establish a process to reduce duplicate and redundant screening and referrals. The success of these efforts will be measured by the coordination of screening in children participating in both Children 1st and Home Visiting Programs.

The Children 1st program will continue efforts to expand telehealth capacity across MCH programs with the CARES Act: Maternal and Child Health Telehealth Capacity in Public Health Systems Direct Award by AMCHP and work with the funded districts to provide WebEx training sessions. The program will continue investigating options for obtaining parental consent before implementing telehealth.

Refugee Health

The SRHP will continue to collaborate with MCH and Health Promotion Evaluation staff to promote and implement developmental screenings for children who have resettled in Georgia from the following countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Dominican Republic, Congo, Eritrea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Ukraine. The Refugee Pediatric Center will continue to provide referrals to the DeKalb Board of Health Refugee Clinic at Kaiser Permanente. Interpreters will continue to be available at the Refugee Pediatric Center for Arabic, Somali, and Swahili speaking refugees. The SRHP will add an interpreter(s) that speaks Pashto/ Dari and Farsi to meet the language needs of newly arrived Afghan refugees. SRHP will monitor referrals and provide developmental screening outreach materials including the Children 1st program, BCW, CMS, EHDI, Autism, and Learn the Signs. Act Early.

Priority Need: Increase the Number of Children, Both With and Without Special Health Care Needs, Who Have a Medical Home

NPM 11: Medical Home

NPM 11 Strategies:

11.1a Expand the use of telehealth technology to improve access to audiological and early intervention services for children and youth with special health care needs.

11.1b Facilitate efforts to educate families about telehealth as an option for care.

11.1c Provide ongoing evaluation of DPHs telehealth network to ensure pediatric specialty services meet the needs of families and patients.

11.1d Develop and implement a quality improvement plan for Title V’s CYSHCN program to identify opportunities in which telehealth technology may be used to improve medical home access.

11.1e Expand the capacity of HMG® Liaisons to help families navigate/access comprehensive services.

11.1f Improve access to information and resources for CYSHCN.

11.1g Develop an outreach plan to engage partners, providers, and families in the utilization of HMG®, a shared resource to assist families to navigate the early childhood system.

Medical Home

In the upcoming year, the Children 1st program will continue to provide education, support and resources to families concerning the importance and benefits of a medical home for all children. HMG® will continue to be a resource for ensuring a medical home for all children and will participate in various learning and training opportunities to strengthen the repository of resources available to families to support the priority.

Priority Need: Promote Oral Health to All Populations

NPM 13.2: Preventive Dental Visit

Percent of children, ages 1 through 17, who had a preventive dental visit in the past year

NPM 13.2 Strategies:

13.2a Create and update a State Oral Health Surveillance Plan functions to identify data sources, collection strategies, collection timeframes, and dissemination approaches.

13.2b Coordinate and provide district coordinator meetings periodically where resources are shared, updates are provided from state and district programs, continuing education or presentations are offered, and technical assistance is offered as needed.

13.2c Work with HMHB and other external partners by providing subject matter expertise and strategic feedback.

13.2d Support district programs partnering with local schools to promote school-based/school-linked sealant and oral health prevention programs that target schools where 50 percent or more of the student population are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

13.2e Support district program staff going to local schools and providing oral health education programs.

13.2f Provide training to local water plant operators on the value of community water fluoridation and technical assistance to improve monthly reporting from local community water systems.

Oral Health

In the upcoming year, the Oral Health program will continue plans to implement the American Academy of Pediatrics “Book, Brush, Bed” program, which strives to build nighttime routines for children around brushing teeth for two minutes with fluoridated toothpaste.

The Oral Health program staff will continue to serve on advisory boards and work groups on oral health for external partners, which includes HMHB Coalition, DECAL, Georgia Cancer Control Consortium Human Papillomavirus (HPV) workgroup, among other stakeholders.

The Oral Health program will collect data in the fall of 2022 and in the spring of 2023 for the next Georgia Third Grade and Kindergarten Basic Screening Survey. The Burden of Oral Health Report, originally created in 2014, will be updated. The comprehensive report serves as an environmental scan around the overall burden of oral health in Georgia and will be utilized as a road map to address priority needs around oral health.

The Oral Health program will continue to promote school sealant programs, an evidence-based dental decay prevention measure of placing dental sealants on molar teeth in the school setting, in the upcoming year, as children return to in-person school. This service occurs at a location where children congregate and does not require parents to be present, which helps eliminates barriers such as scheduling around the parents’ workday and finding childcare for other children in the home. Dental screenings, fluoride varnish application, and oral health education are also components of the school-based program. Efforts to make referrals to dental providers and find dental homes for these children will continue so other dental needs can be addressed. The Oral Health program will continue to partner with district staff and external partners to increase the presence of school sealant programs within Georgia.

Other Child Health Programs

Early Brain Development and Language Acquisition (ECL/LA)

In the upcoming year, the ECL/LA will work closely to monitor shared goals and improve processes and strategies to achieve the goals of HMG®, LENA Start, and Collective Impact. HMG® will engage and work with state and local agencies and promote HMG® as a resource to share when interacting with families. The ECL/LA will support and strengthen the four core components of HMG® in Georgia: Centralized Access Point, Family and Community Outreach, Child Health Care Provider Outreach, and Data Collection and Analysis. The program will evaluate the effectiveness and use of the HMG® Central Access Point to ensure a high-quality experience and customer service. HMG® will identify and share data for other child health call lines transferred to the HMG® Central Access Point (CAP). HMG® Liaisons will continue to participate in cultural competency training and participate in training provided by the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Disabilities to better serve families in crisis or seeking mental and behavioral health services. An educational platform will be developed to provide train the trainer modules targeting large-scale workforces that interact with new and expectant parents, including nurses, WIC nutritionists, early learning educators, home visitors and HMG® Liaisons. FACS staff will prepare employees in these fields to coach families on how and why to provide babies with “language nutrition” needed to support early childhood literacy. Staff will continue to support the implementation of Reach Out and Read in public health settings like WIC and during immunization visits and through home visiting programs. The ECL/LA will link with other state agencies and initiatives to promote evidence-based approaches to measurably improve early childhood literacy and language acquisition while reducing disparities in targeted areas.

Georgia Shape

Georgia Shape will continue building a network of partners to support its commitment to improving the health of Georgia’s children by offering assistance and opportunity to achieve a greater level of overall fitness. The FG tool will continue to be used for Georgia Shape’s annual standardized fitness assessment to evaluate health-related fitness, including aerobic capacity, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility and body composition using objective criteria. Reports will be generated providing valuable individual, school, and state-level data to empower parents, schools, and the community to best access the current health needs for children. Georgia Shape will continue to work with 120 partners to decrease childhood BMI measures while increasing childhood aerobic capacity measures and physical activity levels.

Vision

DPH will continue to assist in the completion, compilation, and assessment of the Certificate of Vision, Hearing, Dental, and Nutrition Screening form required for the school admittance in Georgia.

Immunizations

In the upcoming year, the GIP will continue communication efforts with MCH to strengthen coordination and collaboration.

The PHBPP will continue to work with DPH’s Assistant Commissioner for Policy to create a new regulation to require Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C serologic testing for every pregnant woman in Georgia. The maternal rule change will be posted for public comment and public hearing and presented to DPHs Commissioner for final approval. The PHBPP will collaborate with DPH Epidemiology to add Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and Hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs) (positive, negative, indeterminate) laboratory reporting for infants and children greater than two years of age to identify HBV-exposed infants that completed recommended testing.

Child Occupant Safety Program (COSP)

The Injury Prevention program will continue to distribute child safety seats to children, including specialized child safety restraint systems for CYSHCN. The number of lives saved will continue to be documented through Teddy Bear Stickers placed on the child safety seats that are distributed. Child passenger safety trainings to internal and external stakeholders will continue. Staff will provide online modular trainings and will continue utilizing non-traditional methods to conduct outreach with agencies. Online platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, are being utilized for training and outreach. The program will continue to offer a 16-hour special needs transportation program- “Safe Travel for All Children: Transporting Children with Special Health Care Needs” at least twice per year. Staff will continue to conduct transportation evaluations for CYSHCN during certain clinic days, in conjunction with CMS.