UnitedHealthcare Provides $1 Million Grant to Connecticut Children's Medical Center to Improve Access to Quality Pediatric Health Care

UnitedHealthcare has provided a $1 million grant for the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center’s Office for Community Child Health (OCCH) to help enhance care delivery and address critical public health issues for children. These issues include child development, wellness, and chronic conditions such as asthma and obesity.

Stephen Farrell, CEO of UnitedHealthcare of New England (center), presents a $1 million grant to Dr. Paul Dworkin, executive vice president of Connecticut Children Medical Center's Office for Community Child Health (OCCH) (left) and Martin Gavin, president and CEO of Connecticut Children's, to support the newly created office. Connecticut Children's OCCH is a first-of-its-kind model for providing community-based, coordinated care for children with an emphasis on healthy child development, wellness, and disease and injury prevention (Photo: Connecticut Children's Medical Center).

Connecticut Children’s OCCH is a first-of-its-kind model for providing community-based, coordinated care for children with an emphasis on healthy child development, wellness, and disease and injury prevention. OCCH is developing and testing health service delivery models that address community, state and health system needs. Many new programs will be piloted in Hartford with the goal of seeing them replicated on state and national levels.

The UnitedHealthcare grant will help create a Maintenance of Certification program to train primary care pediatricians in managing diseases such as asthma and obesity. The UnitedHealthcare Innovation Fund will also be established to help OCCH quickly bring new programs from design to implementation, and ultimately, to evaluation and replication.

In addition, OCCH will provide 600 primary care doctors at more than 170 practices in Connecticut with training to enhance children’s health care quality.

“We are proud to partner with UnitedHealthcare to support pediatricians’ lifelong learning and professional development,” said Paul Dworkin, M.D., director of OCCH. “Together, we will enhance the quality and capacity of pediatric care to address an array of critical health issues, and help promote the healthy development of children in Connecticut and nationwide.”

“We look forward to working with Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health and pediatricians throughout Connecticut to enhance the coordination, delivery and quality of children’s health care,” said Stephen J. Farrell, CEO, UnitedHealthcare of New England.

To date, OCCH has partnered with 10 local, state and regional programs to help community and primary care providers coordinate quality, cost-effective care for children under one roof. The programs include Easy Breathing, Educating Practices in their Communities (EPIC), the Hartford Childhood Wellness Alliance, Help Me Grow, Injury Prevention Center, Lead Action for Medicaid Primary Prevention (LAMPP), Resident Education in Advocacy and Community Health (REACH), and the Special Kids Support Center (SKSC).

“Our office is a better place for primary care because of the OCCH and its programs. Looking ahead, there is an opportunity for OCCH to have a dramatic impact on Connecticut’s childhood obesity epidemic by helping identify key indicators and community resources for patients and families dealing with the disease,” said Barbara Ziogas, M.D., a primary care physician at Farmington Pediatrics. “Obesity is a significant health issue in our country, and the OCCH provides us with the resources to access community care and intervene now.”

About Connecticut Children’s Medical Center
Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is a nationally recognized, 187-bed not-for-profit children’s hospital serving as the primary teaching hospital for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Named among the best in the nation for several of its pediatric specialties in the annual U.S. News & World Report “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings, Connecticut Children’s is the only free-standing children’s hospital in Connecticut that offers comprehensive, world-class health care to children. Our pediatric services are available at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford and at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, with neonatal intensive care units at Hartford Hospital and the University of Connecticut Health Center, along with five specialty care centers and 10 other locations across the state. Connecticut Children’s has a medical staff of nearly 1,100 practicing in more than 30 specialties.

For more information, visit www.connecticutchildrens.org or connect with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/connecticutchildrens and Twitter at www.twitter.com/ctchildrens.

About UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare is dedicated to helping people nationwide live healthier lives by simplifying the health care experience, meeting consumer health and wellness needs, and sustaining trusted relationships with care providers. The company offers the full spectrum of health benefit programs for individuals, employers and Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, and contracts directly with more than 800,000 physicians and care professionals, and 6,000 hospitals and other care facilities nationwide. Globally, UnitedHealthcare serves more than 45 million people in health benefits and is one of the businesses of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified Fortune 50 health and well-being company.

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