Results-Based Leadership Program Reports Improvements in Children’s Health Services

Posted May 9, 2017
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Blog resultsbasedleadershipprogram 2017

The first cohort of the Children’s Health Lead­er­ship Net­work pro­gram has con­clud­ed with improve­ments for children’s health across the 14 states of its par­tic­i­pants, from greater access to child health insur­ance cov­er­age and health and well­ness ser­vices to expand­ed health-relat­ed treat­ment and programs.

The net­work, launched in 2015 by the Casey Foun­da­tion, the David and Lucile Packard Foun­da­tion and The Atlantic Phil­an­thropies, grew out of con­cerns about pub­lic cov­er­age options for chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. To keep the inter­ests of chil­dren and fam­i­lies front and cen­ter in a chang­ing health pol­i­cy envi­ron­ment, the net­work is empow­er­ing a col­lec­tive of lead­ers and hon­ing their exper­tise in health pol­i­cy, advo­ca­cy and lead­er­ship. By 2025, these part­ners hope to have near­ly 100 mem­bers of the net­work serv­ing in lead­er­ship capac­i­ties serv­ing chil­dren through­out the country.

All togeth­er, the advo­cates helped hun­dreds of thou­sands of chil­dren gain access to health insur­ance, secur­ing mil­lions of dol­lars fund­ing for men­tal health ser­vices, screen­ings and sub­stance abuse treat­ment,” said Ash­ley B. Stew­art, a senior asso­ciate at the Foun­da­tion who led imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gram. Inten­tion­al­ly men­tored, sup­port­ed and net­worked, these lead­ers will become the next gen­er­a­tion of pow­er­ful advo­ca­cy voic­es for children’s health.”

SEE INFO­GRAPH­IC OF CHILDREN’S HEALTH LEAD­ER­SHIP NET­WORK RESULTS

This cohort had to be par­tic­u­lar­ly nim­ble giv­en the results of the 2016 elec­tion, which occurred mid­way through the 16-month results-based lead­er­ship pro­gram. Many par­tic­i­pants shift­ed their indi­vid­ual goals giv­en new fed­er­al pro­pos­als to repeal and replace the Afford­able Care Act and worked to under­stand and edu­cate pol­i­cy­mak­ers on ways those pro­pos­als might affect their states.

Here are just a few of the ways that the pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy efforts of net­work lead­ers made improve­ments for chil­dren and fam­i­lies in their states dur­ing the program:

  • 300,000 low-income adults in Arkansas will keep med­ical cov­er­age as a result of Med­ic­aid expansion.
  • Vir­ginia ded­i­cat­ed $32 mil­lion in new state fund­ing to behav­ioral health and sub­stance abuse treat­ment, which will direct­ly serve at least 16,000 chil­dren and adults.
  • New require­ments mean 500,000 chil­dren in Illi­nois annu­al­ly receive devel­op­men­tal and social-emo­tion­al screen­ings as part of their school health examination.

Par­tic­i­pant Ben­jamin Rubin, senior asso­ciate in neu­rode­vel­op­ment and health at Chil­dren Now in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia, said the pro­gram influ­enced his approach to his work around child­hood adver­si­ty. The results-based frame­work made it clear that to achieve sys­tem-lev­el change or state pol­i­cy wins, my part­ners and I need to devel­op a cul­ture of account­abil­i­ty and align­ment. We need a shared under­stand­ing of the pop­u­la­tion we’re try­ing to help, the fac­tors that impact them and how we’ll track and mea­sure suc­cess,” he said. Per­son­al­ly, I real­ize I need to be bold­er, claim my author­i­ty and speak up to make a difference.”

Appli­ca­tions for the next cohort of CHLN fel­lows will be avail­able in 2018.

The fol­low­ing are the 16 par­tic­i­pants from the first cohort:

  • Kathryn Audette, direc­tor of state gov­ern­ment rela­tions, Boston Children’s Hospital
  • Shana Bart­ley, pol­i­cy and pro­gram man­ag­er, DC Action for Children
  • Suzanne Brundage, senior health pol­i­cy ana­lyst, Unit­ed Hos­pi­tal Fund (New York)
  • Eri­ka Fricke, health pol­i­cy direc­tor, Allies for Chil­dren (Penn­syl­va­nia)
  • Joe Fu, senior direc­tor for health, First Things First (Ari­zona)
  • Pradeep Gid­wani, med­ical direc­tor, Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics (Cal­i­for­nia)
  • James God­dard, direc­tor of eco­nom­ic jus­tice and health care access pro­grams, Nebras­ka Appleseed
  • Danielle Kilchen­stein, pro­gram direc­tor, Unit­ed Way of California
  • Mar­qui­ta Lit­tle, direc­tor of health pol­i­cy, Arkansas Advo­cates for Chil­dren and Families
  • Marisol Ortiz, Care for Kids pro­gram man­ag­er, Pri­ma­ry Care Coali­tion of Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Inc. (Mary­land)
  • Ben­jamin Rubin, senior asso­ciate for neu­rode­vel­op­ment and health, Chil­dren Now (Cal­i­for­nia)
  • Eri­ca Fen­er Sitkoff, pol­i­cy and out­reach direc­tor, Voic­es for Georgia’s Children
  • Trevor Storrs, exec­u­tive direc­tor, Alas­ka Children’s Trust
  • Massey Whor­ley, senior pol­i­cy advi­sor, Office of the Vir­ginia Governor
  • Cia­ra Zachary, health pol­i­cy ana­lyst, North Car­oli­na Jus­tice Center
  • Amy Zim­mer­man, direc­tor of the Chica­go Med­ical-Legal Part­ner­ship for Chil­dren, Legal Coun­cil for Health Justice

Learn more about the Foundation’s approach to results-based lead­er­ship devel­op­ment.