Immigrant Children by M. Garland and G. Cadeau

Addressing Unmet Needs of Immigrant Children by Marshea Garland, MPH '17 and Gulberly Cadeau, BS Community Health '17

Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo is a Pediatrician at Cohen Children’s Medical Center at Northwell Health and is conducting a research study to see if unmet needs and psychosocial adversity affect health utilization outcomes like doctor visits, emergency room use in minority immigrant children compared to non-immigrant children and if so what factors are contributing to these differences? To collect this data parents will complete a screen at their children’s appointments the general pediatrics clinic at Northwell answering a series of questions consisting of demographic information and questions regarding any unmet needs they may have about their finances, immigration status, health insurance, employment and a host of other needs that affect their everyday life and their child’s. If any responses indicate need then that patient is one that will need to follow up with, if no needs are indicated then they are entered the redcap system as no needs and filed away.

Follow ups are done by the interns who are undergraduate, graduate, and recent graduates from undergraduate. Interns are required to work at least 4 hour shifts twice a week to follow up with patients about their screens and referrals to resources. The follow up process consists of interns calling patients to get a better idea of the needs they indicated on their screen and to provide them with resources from our community resource lists or refer them to our partner Single Stop. The follow ups are separated based on what point they are at in the process; 1^st contact, 2^nd contact and 3^rd/final contact.  Contacts are when the intern has spoken with the patient, any attempts where the patient does not answer or is unavailable to speak is not counted as a point of contact so the intern will follow up again that same week. First follow ups are typically done right after their appointment and second and third follow ups are done about two weeks after each preceding call. Depending on their geographic location we can refer them to Single Stop who deals with the boroughs or we can utilize the Hite resources site or our community resource lists with resources within a few miles of the patient’s geographic location for easier access. Single Stop is a part of The Child Center of NY; they provide services and resources with health insurance, financial guidance, social and legal services. We complete Single Stop’s referral form and email it the head caseworker to be sent to the proper contact for the specific need they are being referred for. The HITE site is a website database that provides information to New Yorkers on a wide range of free or low cost health and social services in their designated area. Participants notate their zip codes on the screen allowing us to identify what services are available in their area for ease of access. By ensuring the resources we provide are nearby we hope it will increase the likelihood of the participants utilizing them.

The ultimate goal of the project is to identify their unmet needs and then connect participants with resources to address them. The goal is that this can become a permanent program at Northwell pediatrics clinic. At present time, integral steps are being made to making this a reality and the analyzing of the data portion will soon begin to get a better picture of the population that the clinic services and how they can properly be addressed and helped.