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Health Equity

Black Youth Experience Disparities in Care for First-Episode Psychosis in Ohio
 Black Youth Experience Disparities in Care for First-Episode Psychosis in Ohio 1024 683 Jessica Nye, PhD
By: Jessica Nye, PhD

Black youth enrolled in Medicaid were more likely to experience a first-episode psychosis (FEP) event and be diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorder but less likely to receive key early intervention services than White youth.   “It’s been known for a long time, especially in the United States, that Black individuals specifically face racial disparities when…

Advancing Care for Infants with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: New Insights into Maternal and Community Health Factors
 Advancing Care for Infants with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome: New Insights into Maternal and Community Health Factors 1024 537 Pam Georgiana
By: Pam Georgiana

Nationwide Children’s Heart Center explores the impact of maternal and social determinants of health on congenital heart disease. While maternal-fetal environment factors are known to impact outcomes in babies who receive the traditional Norwood surgery to treat hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), there is little research on how the maternal-fetal environment affects outcomes after the…

Featured Researcher – Amrik Khalsa, MD
 Featured Researcher – Amrik Khalsa, MD 150 150 Alaina Doklovic
By: Alaina Doklovic

Amrik Khalsa, MD, is a physician and principal investigator in the Center for Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research (CCHEOR) in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He is dual medically trained and board certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and has research expertise in observational research design, community-engaged research, and…

Rural-Urban Differences in Social and Emotional Protective Factors
 Rural-Urban Differences in Social and Emotional Protective Factors 1024 683 Mary Bates, PhD
By: Mary Bates, PhD

Efforts to improve child health and flourishing should consider communities’ unique sources of support. Children living in rural areas experience well-documented health and health care disparities compared to those living in urban areas. Protective factors, such as social connectedness and social engagement, also vary by geography, yet their contribution to differences in child health is…

Caring for Incarcerated Children
 Caring for Incarcerated Children 1024 537 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips

Young people in juvenile detention centers need health care. In fact, decades of studies show they most often need it more urgently than their peers who are not involved in the justice system – nearly 70% of “confined youth” have an unmet health care need (2010 study). So it makes some sense that “urgent care”…

Racial Disparities in Health Care Use Among Medicaid-Covered Children With Congenital Heart Disease
 Racial Disparities in Health Care Use Among Medicaid-Covered Children With Congenital Heart Disease 1024 683 Lauren Dembeck
By: Lauren Dembeck

In the United States, congenital heart disease is the most common birth anomaly, with almost 40,000 newborns diagnosed each year. As these children grow, they are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications. Thus, ensuring they receive recommended cardiology care is essential to their long-term health and well-being. Racial disparities in health outcomes have been…

Bridging Language Barriers to Advance Health Care Equity in Developmental Screenings
 Bridging Language Barriers to Advance Health Care Equity in Developmental Screenings 1024 575 Pam Georgiana
By: Pam Georgiana

A QI project to utilize interpreters for screening questionnaires eliminated completion disparities between English speakers and people who prefer a language other than English.  In primary care pediatrics, there are several standard screenings for development delay in children younger than 30 months. Nationwide Children’s Hospital has a high rate of screening completion – over 90%.…

Featured Researcher — Jeff Bridge, PhD
 Featured Researcher — Jeff Bridge, PhD 150 150 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES

Jeff Bridge, PhD, director of the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, has been actively working to prevent suicide among at-risk youth since he was 19. Although he started as a volunteer, his career in suicide prevention and research has progressed considerably during his 36…

Nephrology Education Ripe With Opportunities to Improve Health Equity
 Nephrology Education Ripe With Opportunities to Improve Health Equity 1024 575 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
By: Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES

The Health Care Justice Committee of the American Society of Nephrology has released recommendations for incorporating anti-racism and social justice concepts into education and mentoring with the goal of improving health equity.   In 2020, leaders in the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) reached out to Ray Bignall II, MD, pediatric nephrologist and assistant chief…

Improving Racial Diversity and Equity in Clinical Trials
 Improving Racial Diversity and Equity in Clinical Trials 1024 511 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips

There is now broad consensus across medicine that clinical trials must be more representative of minority populations. How can that be achieved? Last year, a group of Nationwide Children’s Hospital neonatologists published an unusually pointed critique of racial and ethnic representation in neonatal clinical trials in the Journal of Perinatology. They wrote that the lack…

Study Finds High Mortality Rates of Youths Previously Incarcerated in the Juvenile Legal System
 Study Finds High Mortality Rates of Youths Previously Incarcerated in the Juvenile Legal System 1024 683 Rebecca Cybulski
By: Rebecca Cybulski
silhouette girl portrait

Recent data links youth incarceration to early mortality by homicide, overdose and suicide. New research from the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds that youth aged 11 to 21 years, who have been previously incarcerated in the juvenile legal system, are 5.9 times more likely than the general population to experience early mortality.…

Creating a Physician Workforce that Reflects the Patients and Families We Serve
 Creating a Physician Workforce that Reflects the Patients and Families We Serve 1024 683 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

Workforce disparities persist within health care institutions and medical training. While individuals who identify as Black/African American, Latinx/Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander comprise roughly 30% of the U.S. population, they are less than 15% of physicians, making them underrepresented in medicine – or URM. In fact, as the U.S. population grows more diverse, the…

Alarming Upward Trend in Black Youth Suicide From 2003 to 2017
 Alarming Upward Trend in Black Youth Suicide From 2003 to 2017 1024 683 Lauren Dembeck
By: Lauren Dembeck
Sad black teenage girl

Prioritization of research aimed at identifying specific risk and protective factors associated with Black youth suicidal behavior is needed. In the United States, the rates of suicide and suicidal behavior among youth, children and adolescents 5-17 years of age, have been steadily increasing over the last decade, and Black youth, 5-12 years, are approximately two…

How Can We Make Child Health Equitable?
 How Can We Make Child Health Equitable? 550 350 Jeb Phillips, Abbie Miller and Natalie Wilson
By: Jeb Phillips, Abbie Miller and Natalie Wilson

Researchers in the Center for Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital are tackling this question by identifying health disparities and uncovering exactly how social drivers of health impact outcomes. “Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.” That’s how the Robert Wood…

Study Shows That When Housing Quality is Poor, Children Suffer
 Study Shows That When Housing Quality is Poor, Children Suffer 1024 575 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips
two houses: one in poor repair, one in good repair

Holes in floors, cracks in walls, plumbing issues and/or problems with pests are linked with overall poorer pediatric health and higher health care use in a nationally representative study. Housing instability and homelessness are widely understood to have an impact on health, and certain housing problems have been linked to specific childhood health conditions, such…

What Kids and Kidneys Can Teach Pediatricians About Racism in America
 What Kids and Kidneys Can Teach Pediatricians About Racism in America 1024 575 Ray Bignall
By: Ray Bignall

O.N. Ray Bignall II, MD, FAAP, director of Kidney Health Advocacy and Community Engagement, explores how “race modifiers,” structural racism and health disparities are perpetuated in kidney care for kids, highlighting important areas primed for change.

Race Is a Risk Factor for Postoperative Death in Apparently Healthy Children in United States
 Race Is a Risk Factor for Postoperative Death in Apparently Healthy Children in United States 1024 683 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

African American children were nearly 3.5 times more likely to die within 30 days after surgery, compared to white peers. In a new study, published in Pediatrics, researchers have shown that being African American was strongly associated with a higher risk of postoperative complications and mortality among apparently healthy children. In fact, compared to their white peers,…

When the Neighborhood Improves, Does Pediatric Health Care Utilization Decrease?
 When the Neighborhood Improves, Does Pediatric Health Care Utilization Decrease? 1024 683 Jeb Phillips
By: Jeb Phillips

A new study finds decreased rates of high-cost care after a community development initiative, which may exceed decreases in similar neighborhoods. More than a decade into the community development initiative called Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families, the 30-block Southern Orchards neighborhood on Columbus’ South Side had clear, notable improvement. Home vacancy fell from 30% to under 6%.…

Bias: Do You See What Influences You?
 Bias: Do You See What Influences You? 1024 575 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

In the United States, children of color have worse clinical outcomes than white children. Racial disparities have been documented in nearly every pediatric specialty. Among the most studied and most widely perpetuated disparities are those between black and white children. For example: The infant mortality rate, while declining overall, is nearly three times higher for…

How and When Do Children Become Aware of the Construct of “Race”?
 How and When Do Children Become Aware of the Construct of “Race”? 1024 737 Abbie Miller
By: Abbie Miller

Researchers have shown that babies of color are just as likely to experience bias as adults of color. But very young children don’t interpret that experience in the same way as older children. “Children become aware of differences in physical characteristics of human beings when they are 3 years old. They notice differences in sex…

A Hidden Epidemic: Parental Incarceration and What To Do When It Affects Your Patients
 A Hidden Epidemic: Parental Incarceration and What To Do When It Affects Your Patients 1024 512 Andrew Axelson and Samantha Boch, PhD
By: Andrew Axelson and Samantha Boch, PhD

If having an incarcerated parent was classified as a chronic health condition, it would be the second most prevalent chronic condition in the United States for children under the age of 18 – just behind asthma. In fact, the percentage of American youth with an incarcerated parent is about 10 times higher than the percentage…

There’s No Place Like Home (Depending on Which State You Live In…..)
 There’s No Place Like Home (Depending on Which State You Live In…..) 150 150 Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH
By: Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH

Researchers find wide variation in how federal entitlement and benefit programs are implemented from state to state. Over the past five decades, the health of America’s children has improved considerably. Unfortunately, those improvements were not evenly distributed. Most American children are healthy and have promising futures. Children in poverty, on the other hand, infrequently move…

Disparities in Care: Beyond Insurance
 Disparities in Care: Beyond Insurance 150 150 Dave Ghose
By: Dave Ghose

A Minnesota study suggests the ACA’s Medicaid expansion won’t be enough to reduce persistent health care disparities among minority groups. The health care gap isn’t just about insurance. A variety of barriers — including transportation, inconvenient office hours, cultural biases and confusing information — prevent minorities from accessing health care. In a paper published in the August issue…

Do Your Patients Understand You? Strategies to Improve Patient-Provider Communication
 Do Your Patients Understand You? Strategies to Improve Patient-Provider Communication 150 150 Tiasha Letostak, PhD
By: Tiasha Letostak, PhD

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Title V, defines health literacy as the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, communicate, process and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions. However, over a third of patients in the United States — or 77 million adults…