Connect with and learn from others around the country on topics that matter most to children with medical complexity (CMC) and their families. This inter-disciplinary café-style series, funded by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH), will offer short presentations by nationally recognized experts in the care of CMC, including family partners. The sessions will focus on facilitated, active group discussion aimed at advancing policy, clinical practice, research, and interdisciplinary education.
What to Expect
Each 60-minute café in this six-part series will take place via Zoom from March 2024 to December 2024. Each café will begin with a 15-minute overview of the current state of the field in key topic areas, followed by a 5-minute Q&A. The remainder of each session will focus on facilitated discussion to foster co-learning among participants that leads to meaningful systems improvements. We will share a thematic synthesis of each session with the CMC community to summarize the discussion and inform change makers in their systems improvement efforts.
Who Is This Series For
Discussions will be shaped by an interdisciplinary faculty, the majority of whom identify as family and/or caregivers of CMC and children and youth with special health care needs. The target audience is intentionally broad, including pediatric primary and specialty care providers, researchers, family partners, advocates, payers, maternal and child health professionals, state and federal agency staff, and others.
About the Team
The project is led by Bethlyn Houlihan, MSW, MPH and Meg Comeau, MHA, out of the Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health at the Boston University School of Social Work. They will weave in key learnings from the 2022 Future of Care for Children with Medical Complexity National Convening and the recently published Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Advance Care for CMC (CMC CoIIN) Pediatrics journal supplement (January 2024).
Café 1
The first café provides a brief overview of key topics, major frameworks, and emerging trends to advance the quality of life and well-being of CMC and their families through federal, state, and local initiatives.
Learn MoreCafé 2
In the second café in the series, discussants will briefly share current framing around what matters most to families tied to strategies to improve care delivery and mitigate systems-level bias.
Learn More
This inter-disciplinary café-style series is funded by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH).