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Child & Adolescent Health

Study Examples | Key Publications | Intro

Group Health Center for Health Studies (CHS) researchers from a variety of disciplines work together to find ways to prevent and treat illness in children. Studies span infancy to adolescence, with investigators discovering ways to boost parenting skills, enhance safety, and improve care for chronic conditions such as asthma, depression, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Patient safety is a big concern because most research in medicine and health care focuses only on adults. "Children are not just miniature adults; their preventive needs are often quite different from those of adults," says David C. Grossman, MD, MPH, senior investigator at Group Health Center for Health Studies and medical director of preventive care at Group Health. "We are also beginning to appreciate how child and adolescent health behavior can be associated with later adult disease and injury. Research into how to modify behavior at much earlier ages may lead to important interventions that start with early childhood and adolescence."

Because a relatively high proportion of American children live in poverty, the CHS investigators are also exploring ways to improve health care for disadvantaged youngsters. CHS associate investigator Paula Lozano, MD, MPH, developed a way of measuring the cultural competence of different practice sites, including the diversity of the staff—from the receptionists to the physicians—and their ability to communicate clearly with various ethnic groups. The higher a site’s cultural competence, the investigators have found, the more fully the health needs of the low-income children are met.

Finding ways to accurately estimate the health needs of children in a given population is another important area of inquiry. "Without good pediatric models for estimating relative disease severity among children, health care systems may underestimate demand," explains economist Paul A. Fishman, PhD, associate investigator at CHS. "The result can be reduced reimbursement and inadequate health care for chronically ill children."

Study Examples | Key Publications | Intro

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