Docs for Tots 20th Anniversary Year

Pelumi Soyemi, Docs for Tots’ Implementation Specialist, was selected as a NYSCHECK scholar. NYSCHECK is the first statewide publicly funded network of Children’s Environmental Health Centers in the country. Scholars across the state work together to protect and promote children’s health and the environment.

Pelumi’s work with NYSCHECK focuses on developing an environmental needs assessment for children (0-5) living in the Wyandanch catchment area. Engaging parents of young children in a photovoice project will bring greater awareness to the environmental health priorities of families and children living in Wyandanch and prompt focused interventions targeted at identified environmental health concerns.

Docs for Tots’ launches Help Me Grow Long Island with a kick off that included special grand rounds hosted by NYU Long Island, meetings with county officials, and a party for all the partners that make Help Me Grow Long Island possible. We were fortunate to have Dr. Paul Dworkin, Founding Director of Help Me Grow National Center, to celebrate the launch and our joining the Help Me Grow family. Now in it’s fifth year, Help Me Grow Long Island is pleased to be partnering with the other NY State Help Me Grow systems (Western NY, Finger Lakes, and Onondaga) to build Help Me Grow NY!

Docs for Tots’ launches Well Moms, Well Tots: Maternal Depression and Mother Child-Well Being a practice improvement project to help pediatric providers integrate maternal depression screening. Melissa Passarelli headed the project and Laraib Humayun joined the Docs for Tots team to make change happen! Maternal depression has a significant impact on quality of life and can impair a mother’s ability to develop healthy attachment and parenting skills in a child’s early years. Melissa and Laraib addressed considerations such as stigma and language barriers that make it harder to communicate with providers and connect to helpful services. The work later received a 2018 Honorable Mention in Innovative Community Solutions at the Maternal Mental Health Innovation Awards by 2020 Mom and the Marce Society of North America.

October 29, 2013, Child Care Council of Nassau Receives Superstorm Sandy Social Services Block Grant in Collaboration with Docs for Tots and Adelphi University Institute for Parenting. The project, called NASSAU THRIVES – Building Resiliency in Young Children, promoted social-emotional health for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers through outreach to early care and learning providers, curriculum implementation, and support services, including an evidence-based mental health consultation model which Docs For Tots is overseeing.
This work continued until 2017 and laid the foundation for the work that Docs for Tots continues to this day in the area of Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation with Project BRITE – Building Relationship in Infant and Toddler Early Education.

Dr. Isakson, Docs for Tots current Executive Director, and her co-director at the time, Dina Lieser, MD, changed the focus of Docs for Tots from a nationally oriented one, to a New York State oriented one, knowing that the NYS based activities and related outcomes could still have national implications. The initial NY board of directors (Liz, Dina, Rahil Briggs, and Lisa Langhart) developed a strategic plan with an updated mission:

To bring together children’s doctors and communities to promote practices, policies and investments in children from prenatal to age five that foster children’s healthy development and future success.

This mission remains the same to this day, accomplished in its early years in NY through five priority issues:
· Promoting the Early Childhood Medical Home
· Increasing Developmental Screening
· Promoting High Quality Early Care and Education
· Improving Social-Emotional Health
· Addressing the Impacts of Poverty