Advocates

Medical Home

The medical home is high quality, comprehensive health care for children that is family centered, accessible and coordinated. The medical home is a great opportunity to meet children and families where they are—doctors see more children than any other service system. From prenatal care to age five, families have over twenty regularly scheduled health care visits. When these visits take place in a fully realized medical home, they are a way to provide a full range of supports to young children and their families. A key component of the early childhood medical home is care coordination across a number of systems. In addition to traditional health promotion and prevention activities, the early childhood medical home should address: 1) Social-emotional development of children; including positive parenting and addressing toxic stress 2) Early learning – recognizing parents as first teachers and the critical role of access to quality child care environments 3) Access to family supports, including family leave insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and food stamps The medical home should be supported in a way that recognizes the potential to reach our youngest children and shape their lifelong health and development. Docs for Tots works with partners to bring attention to the unique potential of the early childhood medical home.
To strengthen the medical home, you can:

• Ensure that the early childhood perspective is represented in conversations and decisions on health policy that affects children and families
• Strengthen linkages between the medical home and early childhood systems (including early care and education, parent education and home visiting)
• Foster greater connection between the children’s mental health system, doctors and other early childhood stakeholders
• Raise parental and public awareness about what to expect from the medical home and how to access it
• Integrate early childhood issues (including developmental screening and maternal depression screening) as quality measures for the medical home
• Engage doctors as public champions of your advocacy agenda by partnering with Docs for Tots

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Healthy Steps

Medical Legal Partnership