About Us
Purpose
To conduct research integrating child development knowledge into primary pediatric care and to disseminate this knowledge in practical form nationally. To serve as a multidisciplinary training site.
Overview
The Center is a non-profit organization that aims to improve the lives of children and their families by using the pediatric check-up visit as a window into the social, emotional and behavioral health of the child and his/her family. To achieve this goal, we:
- Conduct applied research to determine better ways to detect mental health problems and assist families in coping with them.
- Incorporate research results into clinical practice.
- Train fellows and residents in these techniques to disseminate in future practices.
Another major emphasis of the Center is the development of a parent/child/clinician interactive computer system called the Comprehensive Health and Decision Information System or CHADIS. CHADIS helps families describe the strengths and challenges of their children and allows clinicians to access that information via an "intelligent electronic medical record" with specific prompts, guides, related clinical information and resource information to aid clinical encounters. CHADIS also assists clinicians in creating reports for parents in the form of an individualized health passport, "memory book" and recommendations with resource guides. Other formats for training and dissemination of information by the Center include ongoing seminars and presentations for practitioners, both locally and nationally.
