Docs for Tots 20th Anniversary Year

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 Pasarelli 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.

In 2013 Docs for Tots received grants from the Rauch Foundation and Hagedorn Foundation to help improve developmental screening practices across Nassau County. This funding enabled Docs for Tots to work with healthcare practices:

• Supporting doctors in their Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) efforts by aligning early screening and referral practices with core NCQA and NYS requirements
• Linking parents and doctors to community resources to support the youngest children
• Providing a learning community to share successes, challenges, and opportunities.

As an urban-based pediatrician, Dr. Askew (current President and CEO of the Meyer Foundation and former NYC Deputy Commissioner of Health) was continually frustrated by factors beyond his clinical practice walls that had far greater impact on his patient’s well-being than anything he could “treat” in the office. These included: poverty, lack of access to social services, inadequate early care and education, unsafe environments, racism, and more.
He founded Docs for Tots to create a way for children’s doctors to actively promote policies and practices to improve the health and development of infants and young children, taking the practice of medicine beyond clinic walls.