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Project Name: FY 2023 Early Childhood Development (H8K)
Applicant Title: CHARLES B. WANG COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER, INC.
Abstract Text: ADDRESS: 125 Walker Street New York, NY 10013 PROJECT DIRECTOR: Pauline Sikat xxx-xxx-xxxx [P] xxx-xxx-xxxx [F] xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx www.cbwchc.org The Steps To A Right Start (STARS) Program at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center (CBWCHC) proposes to increase early childhood development (ECD) screenings for patients aged 0-5 years and provide timely access and/or linkages to follow-up services for patients and their caregivers who are identified as having additional needs. Children aged 0-5 undergo rapid cognitive, physical, linguistic and social-emotional growth and development. Social and environmental factors such as access to stable housing and parental mental health can impact children’s development. Early assessment of children’s development through screening, monitoring and evaluation helps ensure that young children and their families can be linked to needed services in a timely manner. CBWCHC is a designated HealthySteps program site and has adopted the nationally recognized evidence based model into its pediatric practice for 0-3 year old patients since 2020. CBWCHC will build on the existing HealthySteps program to provide early childhood screening and service delivery for children through the routine well child medical visits. For the STARS program, CBWCHC will (1) expand its already robust battery of early childhood developmental screenings (in multiple languages) in the 0-3 year range to include developmentally appropriate, validated screenings for 4-5 year old children and caregivers, and (2) increase organizational capacity to ensure all patients aged 0-5 and/or their primary caregivers are provided or linked to additional needed services. The STARS Program will include ECD activities in four focus areas that expand and enhance current, evidence-based approaches to promote and support healthy early childhood development. STARS will build capacity within its ECD bilingual workforce through trainings to expand their ECD expertise. STARS will also offer team-based care coordination that will include clinicians, care management specialists, social workers, health educators, parent peer advocates and a robust referral network in order to ensure screenings and linkages to services. Feedback from patients’ parents and primary caregivers collected through surveys, focus groups and other patient engagement mechanisms will be used by the program team to identify and address areas in need of improvement. In addition to the full range of enabling services that CBWCHC currently provides to pediatric patients and their families, the STARS Program will expand and enhance patient education activities, to address stigma of developmental delays, autism and behavioral disorders, as well as develop new materials focused on the importance of early childhood education and how to access such services. The STARS Program will enable CBWCHC to enhance its capacity to address the developmental needs of 0-5 year old patients and their families by expanding its care coordination and patient navigation resources to include early childhood learning opportunities in daycare and preschool. For more than 50 years, CBWCHC (Health Center Program grant #H80CS00358) has provided comprehensive, affordable and high-quality primary care and support services to medically underserved Asian Americans in the New York City metropolitan area. As a Patient-Centered Medical Home recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, CBWCHC provides patient-centered, well-coordinated, bilingual and culturally competent care at service sites located in Manhattan’s Chinatown and in Flushing, Queens County. In 2021, CBWCHC served more than 55,000 patients and provided approximately 268,000 visits. The STARS Program requests $400,000 over a two-year period to annually serve over 5,000 families with children aged 0-5 years old at one of its five service sites.