Children’s hospitals and health systems play an essential role in the health and well-being of children by providing specialized care, crucial research, essential education, and vital community outreach.
Whether it’s within their organization or outside the hospital walls, children’s hospitals and health systems are driving initiatives that address the unique needs of children and advocating for policies that support patients, families, and the pediatric workforce that cares for them.
Designing care to fit children's unique needs
- Children’s hospitals go beyond the clinical care of their patients to support patient families through housing access, nutrition security programs, education support, and more.
- For children who are chronically ill or have medically complex conditions, whole-child programs improve outcomes and hands-on engagement empowers families to care for their child.
- Excellent pediatric care requires specialized training, and children’s hospitals are working together to secure the federal funding necessary to support it.
- Children’s hospitals are leading research in pediatric-specific treatments and technologies and improving care through cutting-edge training simulations, one-on-one mentorships, and award-winning training modules.
Working together to better care for all children
- As the nation continues to struggle with a pediatric mental health crisis, children’s hospitals are forging solutions to address urgent behavioral health needs.
- When national circumstances, such as supply chain shortages, threaten patient outcomes, children’s hospitals step in with solutions and insight that no other organization can provide.
- An evolving data landscape is empowering children’s hospitals to make dramatic clinical and operational improvements, achieve substantial reductions in morbidity and mortality, and expand diagnostic capabilities with new technology.
- While clinical care is always a focus, children’s hospitals are applying quality improvement methods to areas like health equity and behavioral and mental health to improve outcomes for all children.
Advocating for patients, families and those that care for them
- Children’s Hospital Association (CHA), its member hospitals and patient families are essential advocates, providing Congress with guidance and insight into the complex health care needs of children.
- Hospital leaders are addressing staff shortages through inventive initiatives to recruit, retain, and train their workforce from within.
- Within their organizations, children’s hospitals are fighting racism, developing diverse leaders, and addressing the social drivers of health for their employees.
- For their patients, children’s hospitals are reducing longstanding disparities, developing data to identify and measure inequities, advancing digital health equity, and diversifying their suppliers.
Children’s hospitals and health systems play an essential role in the care of our nation’s children. CHA is dedicated to supporting that role by bringing pediatric leaders together to learn, collaborate, innovate, and improve children’s health care and child health now and into the future.
