National Centers

Six National Outcomes for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs and Corresponding National Centers

1. Families are Partners
Family Voices is a national family organization that promotes family participation and satisfaction via a network of 40,000 families and friends, a volunteer coordinator in each state, and ten regional coordinators. Family Voices serves as a national clearinghouse for information and education about ways to assure and improve health carefor children with disabilities and chronic conditions. http://www.familyvoices.org

2. Medical Home
National Center of Medical Home Initiatives for Children with Special Needs provides support to physicians, families, and other providers caring for children with special health care needs, so that they have access to a medical home. http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org

3. Early and Continuous Screening
National Center for Hearing Assessment/Management (NCHAM) supports early and continuous screening and works to ensure that all infants (newborns) and toddlers with hearing loss are identified as early as possible and provided with timely and appropriate audiological, educational, and medical intervention. http://www.infanthearing.org

4. Adequate Insurance
Catalyst Center: Improving Financing of Care for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs seeks to promote health coverage of all CYSHCN, eliminate underinsurance, disseminate innovative financing methods for services and enhance knowledge and collaboration among stakeholder groups around financing issues. Methods include short-term technical assistance to stakeholders, in-depth technical assistance to selected state teams, dissemination of existing research on financing, a series of small national “summit” meetings and new research on key financing topics. http://www.hdwg.org/projects/catalyst.htm

5. Community-Based Systems of Services and Satisfied Parents
Champions for Inclusive Communities (Champions InC) is striving to assist communities in building systems of services and supports that families can access easily. Working closely with state CYSHCN directors, Champions Inc is creating a community recognition program to highlight the strategies that communities are using to help families find the services and supports that they need. http://championsinc.org

6. Transition to Adult Life
Healthy and Ready to Work (HRTW): What's HEALTH got to do with transition? EVERYTHING! HRTW provides information and connections to health and transition expertise nationwide--from those in the know, doing the work and living it! http://www.hrtw.org

Related National Centers

National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC)supports family participation and satisfaction and strives to increase the capacity of health and mental health programs to design, implement, and evaluate culturally and linguistically competent service delivery systems. http://gucchd.georgetown.edu/nccc/index.html

CAHMI Data Resource Centeris part of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative and provides leadership and resources for measuring and communicating information about the quality of healthcare for young children (0-3), teens (12-21), and children with chronic conditions. www.cshcndata.org