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.
Register for the Cafés Here
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: 3/27/24
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: 5/29/24
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 MoreCafé 3: 7/24/24
The third of six virtual cafés will be led by discussants Lisa Kirsch, MPAff, of Dell Medical School and Meg Comeau, CISWH senior project director.
Learn MoreCafé 4: 8/21/24
The fourth of six virtual cafés will be led by discussants Jay Berry, MD, MPH, and Katie Huth, MD, MMSc, FRCPC, both of Boston Children's Hospital.
Learn MoreCafé 5: 10/30/24
This café will be led by discussants Nikki Montgomery, MA, MEd, GPAC, Director of Strategy and Communications, Family Voices, mother of a child with medical complexity; and Michelle J. White, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Duke University School of Medicine. Discussants will first give examples of the pressing need to address bias in systems of care and move from a medical to social model of care, and key ways family colleagues’ lived expertise is essential to humanizing systems.
Café 5: 10/24Café 6: 12/4/24
The final of six virtual cafés will be led by discussants Jeff Schiff, MD, MBA and Rich Antonelli, MD, MS, with lead facilitation by Meg Comeau, MHA.
Café 6: 12/4/24
This inter-disciplinary café-style series is funded by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH).