MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A national child healthcare institution has granted funding for 2022-2023 to projects at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital to help young children who are coping with the effects of trauma.
The Urban Child Institute (UCI) awarded $375,000 to the UTHSC Center for Youth Advocacy and Well-Being, formerly the UTHSC Center for Health in Justice Involved Youth, to support the center’s Integrated Care for Child Wellness (ICCW) program.
The UCI also awarded $500,000 to the Family Resilience Initiative (FRI), administered through UT Le Bonheur Specialists (ULPS), a pediatric physician practice of UTHSC faculty members at Le Bonheur, to continue the program’s clinical and research outreach in the community.
The Integrated Care for Child Wellness program focuses on children ages 8 and younger living in the targeted areas of Frayser, South Memphis, and Uptown, who are living with chronic illnesses and challenged with managing them in their community with available resources. This program will expand the work established in the 2021-2022 cycle to also include children who have experienced traumatic injury and need additional services and supports once they return to their homes and community.
“Shelby County has experienced increases in traumatic injuries, especially from gun violence, among very young children, many of whom had already experienced trauma, chronic illnesses, and other health problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Altha Stewart, MD, director of the UTHSC Center for Youth Advocacy and Well-Being.
UTHSC is bringing on additional staff to facilitate the referral and outreach process and a subcontract with Legacy of Legends in the Frayser community ensures that community follow-up includes access to trauma-informed behavioral health, pediatric primary care, and an array of social services. Over 250 families have been engaged by the UTHSC and Legacy of Legends collaborative since the program was initially funded during the 2020-21 funding period, with referrals made to behavioral health and trauma-informed providers for follow-up in the community.
This program will have three community health support specialists working closely with the team to ensure all children experiencing chronic illness or traumatic injury are able to receive trauma-informed community-based services. And families will learn what resources are available in their community to support efforts to reduce a child’s exposure to or impact of trauma. The program is also developing relationships with new community health partners in the targeted neighborhoods and expanding those with existing community partners, such as the UTHSC Health Hub in Uptown, Christ Community Health Services, and Cherokee Health Systems in Frayser, and Advance Memphis in South Memphis.
The grant for the Family Resilience Initiative at Le Bonheur continues funding for the clinical program, which is embedded in the ULPS primary care clinic, a large, urban clinic which sees almost 15,000 unique visits per year in an approximately 95% Medicaid patient population
The FRI research program will include a subset of the FRI clinical program and also mother/child dyads that are not enrolled in FRI clinical. The FRI research program began enrolling patients July 22, 2019. Through January 14, 2022, the research team has enrolled 249 mother/infant dyads.
