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In partnership with states and providers, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) plays a leading role in safeguarding the health of America’s future by providing coverage for more than one in three American children. Through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program’s (CHIP) mandatory and optional benefits, children receive access to a spectrum of comprehensive and preventive health care services aimed at providing a sound start for lifelong health. As a result, children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP lead the nation in participation in preventive care and access to needed care.

CMS and states have also demonstrated consistent commitment to improving the health of children through care redesign and innovation in programs such as Medicaid Health Homes, the Medicaid Innovation Accelerator Program, and models tested under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center), including the State Innovation Models Initiative and Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns Initiative. To build on those efforts, the Innovation Center, in partnership with the Center for Medicaid and Chip Services (CMCS), is releasing a Request for Information (RFI) seeking input on the design of alternative payment models focused on improving the health of children and youth covered by Medicaid and CHIP. As the insurer of a third of the nation’s children and a leader in health care innovation, CMS is uniquely positioned to improve the health of America’s children.

CMS seeks input through the RFI from the broad community of child and youth-focused stakeholders on concepts critical to addressing the comprehensive health needs of children and youth, such as:

• Opportunities and impediments to extending and enhancing integrated service model concepts like accountable care organizations (ACOs) to the pediatric population;
• Flexibilities and supports states and providers may need in order to offer such models of care to a state’s pediatric population; and
• Approaches for states and providers to coordinate Medicaid and CHIP benefits and waivers with other health-related social services for children and youth.

To be assured consideration, RFI comments must be received by March 28, 2017.

Read more about the RFI.

The following is an excerpt from a news article on NJTVOnline.org.

A groundbreaking study on children and mental health on who gets treatment and who doesn’t, why and what impact it has on a child’s development and adulthood. It’s a Rutgers-Camden study to be published in May in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. The study’s author, Assistant Professor Wenhua Lu, joins NJTV News Correspondent Michael Hill to talk about her findings.

Hill: You conclude mental health treatment and counseling services are disproportionately received according to racial and socioeconomic factors. How did you reach that conclusion?

Lu: Yes. For that study I looked at the national survey of children’s studies. It’s national data and we can actually take surveys from parents across the United States. Based on children’s self reports, there are like 15 percent of children who suffer from mental health problems but they didn’t receive appropriate health care. There are enormous disparities with respect to race and socioeconomic status. For example, compared with white Hispanic and black children are less likely to receive the mental health care that they need. And also compared with children who are either publicly insured or privately insured, those kids who don’t have the insurance are less likely to receive the mental health care that they need.

Hill: Why is that? What is there the disparity?

Lu: This is a great question. There are a lost of reasons or risk factors that may lead to these disparities. For example, at the child level, so let’s say like the whole child and adolescent population in general, at the children’s level there’s children and adolescents who have mental health problems. They may have self-induced stigma, or they may have a mistrust to the mental health professionals. And at the parent level, they may also have a stigma and they may also not have enough community support. At the community level, there’s children and adolescents’ families, especially those living in socioeconomic disadvantaged communities, they may have a lack of access to those appropriate health services. At the policy level, for example for children who are publicly insured, like those families who are served by receiving Medicaid, there are opportunities for serving them to receive such health care, but they are not aware of this. So others can contribute to children’s mental health service needs, and also with respect to racial ethnic minority children specifically. Among these groups they may also have cultural mistrust for health care professions, especially in the U.S.

Read the full article on NJTVOnline.org.

On December 6–7, 2016, more than 120 representatives from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funded tribal youth programs gathered in Palms Springs, CA, to share information with their peers and learn from experts in the fields of youth development, trauma-informed care, and juvenile justice as a part of the OJJDP National Tribal Youth Conference entitled “Walking With Tribal Youth: Trauma-Informed, Culturally Based Justice and Healing,” the conference was organized by OJJDP’s Tribal Youth Training and Technical Assistance Center.

According to Ending Violence So Children Can Thrive, a report from the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence, American Indian and Alaska Native children suffer exposure to violence at rates higher than any other race in the United States. They also experience posttraumatic stress disorder at triple the rate of the general population. The effects of this trauma include poor physical and mental health, poor school performance, development of substance use disorders, and overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system.

To address these negative effects, the conference included presentations, workshops, and panel discussions on the impact of historical and intergenerational trauma; trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy; the adaptation of treatment approaches to tribal cultures; the principles of positive youth development; strengths-based strategies for engaging youth (the promotion of cultural connections, skill development, leadership opportunities, and healthy relationships); trauma-informed and culturally appropriate screening tools in the juvenile justice system; and promising practices for building community partnerships in Indian country.

Read more on OJJDP.gov.

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) will host the Health Disparities Research Institute (HDRI) from August 14 – 18, 2017. The HDRI aims to support the research career development of promising minority health/health disparities research scientists early in their careers and stimulate research in the disciplines supported by health disparities science.

The program will feature lectures, mock grant review, seminars, small group discussions on research relevant to minority health and health disparities. It will also include sessions with NIH scientific staff engaged in related health disparities research across the various institutes and centers.

Target Audience

This program is intended for early stage research investigators. Applications will only be accepted from post-doctoral fellows, assistant professors, or individuals in similar early stage research career positions who are engaged in minority health and health disparities research. Early career researchers from diverse backgrounds interested in the conduct of health research, within academic, community-based, non-profit, and other non-academic settings, are encouraged to apply.

Read more on NIMHD.NIH.gov.

Luke Baker has worked in the most remote reaches of Australia and Papua New Guinea, but leaving his family is always a painful rupture. But Facebook is helping in surprising ways.

Now based in Bundaberg, Queensland, he was sent to mining camps as a “fly-in, fly-out” worker (or FIFO), where he’d often spend around three weeks on-site and one week off in an endless, “torturous” cycle. Deciding that writing down his emotions could help, he launched a Facebook page called Fifo Man where he posted thoughts about work, family and wellbeing.

Baker’s page, which now has almost 17,000 followers, is part of network of Facebook pages that are stirring conversations about mental health among men who are not always upfront with their feelings.

FIFO workplaces, where employees often live in isolated, temporary compounds, have been recognised as increasing risk of mental illness.

“When I first started it [the Facebook page] it was just me putting my thoughts and feelings out there,” Baker said. “More and more, messages I got were about guys on-site who had taken their own lives and people that had suffered some depression, and I started to see how bad it really was. “I wanted to break down the stigma around guys’ mental health and encourage them to seek help.”

Dameyon Bonson, a Mangarayi and Torres Strait Islander man based in the Kimberley, has worked extensively on men’s mental health issues. He’s also built an app called YFronts that aims to help men working FIFO jobs with health education. Bonson pushed back on the idea men won’t talk about mental health. “If the environment is suited and is deemed to be safe, then men contribute quite openly and honestly,” he said. “Men are actually really active in this [Facebook] space, but they’re doing it on their terms,” he said, pointing to Fifo Man, but also pages like The OZ Project and A Chance for Change. 

Read more on Mashable.com.

New University of Liverpool research – published in The Lancet Public Health — shows that children who move into poverty are more likely to suffer from social, emotional and behavioral problems than children who remain out of poverty.

Researchers from the University’s Department of Public Health and Policy explored the impact that moving into poverty had on the mental health of children and their mothers, using a nationally representative sample of children born in 2000 and followed up until 2012 (UK Millennium Cohort Study).

The researchers identified 6063 families who were not in poverty and had no mental health problems when their child was 3 years old. They tracked these families and compared the mental health of those that moved into poverty to those that remained out of poverty by the time their child was 11 years old.

Fourteen percent (844) of these 6063 families moved into poverty over this period. The children that moved into poverty were 40% more likely to develop social, emotional or behavioural problems, compared to those that remained out of poverty. The mothers who moved into poverty were also 44% more likely to develop mental health problems and this partially explained the negative effect that poverty had on children’s mental health.

Read more on News-Medical.net.