New Jersey Chapter American Academy of Pediatrics

Mental health- conduct provider outreach and engagement in a region-based and statewide operated mental health care program, focused on giving providers support for mental health integration in primary care through access to behavioral health specialists, including child and adolescent psychiatrists, for consultation. Provide educational programs for pediatric primary care providers and pediatric specialists participating in nj's regional mental health hubs to ensure appropriate screening, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of children presenting in pediatric settings with mental and behavioral health concerns. Educational offerings include monthly cme webinar and learning collaborative series on varied mental health topics to increase providers' comfort with screening, referral and care coordination by the pediatric practice team.

Trauma-informed aces screening & intervention evaluation (tasie) project (funded by hrsa via a contract with safe & sound) - utilizes a toxic stress framework to integrate adverse childhood experiences (aces) screening, and trauma-informed strengths-based interventions to change the standard of pediatric primary care, recognizing the impact of aces on health and effectively treating toxic stress in children. Over the three-year project period, njaap and the center for youth wellness (a program of safe & sound), are implementing the center for youth wellness pilot site program for three cohorts of practices throughout the country. Using project echo, an all teach, all learn quality improvement framework, a series of three 9-month virtual learning collaboratives of pediatric practice teams are being conducted across the united states, ensuring that practices will hear and learn from the on-the-ground experiences of their peers and experts. The tasie project is being evaluated to yield a scalable model for integrating ace screening and trauma-informed strengths-based patient follow-up at practices across the country.

Pediatric mental health care (hrsa) - enhance and supplement nj's regional behavioral health hubs to include telehealth and tele-psychiatry by increasing availability/access to behavioral health services via telehealth, providing training and technical assistance to pediatric primary care providers on the use of evidence-based, culturally-appropriate telehealth protocols, providing web-based education and training sessions to pediatric providers to support early detection, assessment, treatment, and referral for mental/behavioral health concerns, and improving access to treatment and referral services for children and adolescents via telehealth. Promotion and management of patient and provider educational videos and of the website with resources for pediatric providers and the general public. Initial outreach conducted with select nj fqhc's identified as having partnerships with nj schools for offering program services with focus on free mental health education.

Various other programs including lead poisoning prevention, medical home, mental health, oral health and obesity prevention.