Collaborating for better care

The Carolinas Collaborative (CC) is a cohesive network of advocacy leaders from all eight pediatric academic institutions across North and South Carolina. This collaborative promotes the well-being of all children through integration of effective clinic, community and population health strategies. For the past six years, CC has been working to elevate the work within community health and advocacy in the Pediatrics Residency training space.

CC is excited to announce a partnership with the Reach Out and Read (ROR) national office to enrich the lives of children and families in North and South Carolina by promoting evidence-based strategies that foster early relational health. The intricate process of brain development occurs most rapidly in the first three years of life and is dependent on the complex interplay of a child’s environment and biologic response. Strategies that promote positive parent-child interaction can mitigate potential stressors that may lead to poor health outcomes.

As academic pediatricians in the CC, we have unparalleled access to vulnerable children, seeing each child 12 times before year 3. Collectively, we exceed 400,000 visits a year and play an important role in supporting healthy development. Together, we train more than 400 residents per year, making a significant impact on the practice of future pediatricians.

This new project will promote resilience in our families and communities by supporting positive parenting interactions, advocating for children within our communities, and educating future and practicing pediatricians in our two states, building on ROR’s early literacy tool to promote early relational health.

The aim is to understand how to best support families using both clinic-based and community-partnered interventions to encourage resilience. ROR builds on the unique relationship between parents and pediatricians to teach ways to interact with children through early language and literacy, nurture parent-child relationships, and develop school readiness. Families who participate in ROR are more likely to read aloud to their children, leading to improved language scores compared to controls – an effect consistent across families of diverse backgrounds.

Although copious evidence supports the literacy effects of ROR, more is needed to determine whether ROR can be a buffer for those experiencing toxic stress by creating more nurturing parent-child interactions. Therefore, ROR’s national leadership is interested in deepening impacts for families and determining if ROR may be a tool to cultivate resilience and early relational health.

Every CC institution has a member deeply embedded in this work, allowing our collective voice to be heard across both states. We are proud that our own Blakely Amati, MD, will be the South Carolina lead for this project, taking the baton from Kerry Sease, MD, MPH, who has served well in that role for six years.

Blakely Amati, MD, works in the Center for Pediatric Medicine as part of Children’s Hospital–Upstate.

Dr. Sease