E7 - The Wind at Our Backs: Adaptive Title V Leadership and Resilience through COVID with Family-Partnered Quality Improvement Teams - Learnings from the Children with Medical Complexity CoIIN

Please click the Play Video button to watch the video prior to joining the Q&A.

Full Description: “COVID-19 will be a transformative force of its own. I think it will help keep the wind at our backs. I hope there is no going back to how things have always been done - the inefficiencies, measures that don’t matter to families, etc… have been laid bare for all to see.”
Ivy Goldstein, Title V leader, Team Texas, Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Advance the Care of Children with Medical Complexity (CMC CoIIN)
The current deep societal disruption offers an unequivocal opportunity for maternal and child health leaders to transform intensified health-related inequities for children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN), given their public health training, health systems engagement, and centering of families – especially now as we reengineer systems disrupted by COVID. Title V also plays a critical policy role, given cooperative ties to Medicaid.
The CMC CoIIN was funded by MCHB in 2017 as a 4-year QI project to improve the quality of life for CMC, family wellbeing, and cost-effectiveness of their care. Directed by Boston University, ten interprofessional state teams worked on related Quality Improvement (QI) projects. Focus areas included family engagement, medical home, shared plans of care, reducing unmet needs, care coordination, and transition. Considering COVID, the CoIIN received a supplemental Year 5 with state teams for evaluation, dissemination, and sustainability through 7/30/22.
Teams were already equipped to be optimally responsive when COVID hit due to several core CoIIN elements: 1) QI methodology tests small cycles of change, breeding responsiveness. 2) Learning what doesn’t work for systems transformation matters as much in the QI framework as learning what does work, if not more. 3) Teams partnered with families at every level and phase to center on what matters most. 4) Teams were interprofessional, working across sectors.
This workshop will offer a conversational panel with three Title V leaders from diverse CMC CoIIN teams. Team Kentucky’s virtual care QI project became paramount when COVID hit, despite an unexpected leadership change early on. Team Oregon pivoted during COVID to maintain a focus on transition from pediatric to adult health care, and address other system-level barriers to the implementation and sustainability of clinical transition services. Team TX Title V played a pivotal supportive role, brokering a new connection with a vibrant complex care clinic prior to Day 1 to save the project, and centering deep family partnership throughout.
Panel questions will mirror the conference theme: how panelists got here, their COVID pivot, their “why”, and tangible next steps and actionable takeaways for local innovation in policy, programs, and systems of care for CYSCHN. Workshop participants will engage through panel questions, live polling, and Q&A. Our shared discourse will help us all keep the wind at our backs, to harness COVID as a transformative force for health equity into the future.

Abbreviated Description: The current deep societal disruption affords maternal and child health leaders an unequivocal opportunity to transform intensified health inequities for children and youth with special health care needs, given their public health training, health systems engagement, and centering of families. The Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Advance the Care of Children with Medical Complexity (CMC CoIIN) is an MCHB-funded Quality Improvement project to improve CMC quality of life, family wellbeing, and cost-effectiveness of care, now in Year 5. Three Title V leaders from diverse interprofessional, family-partnered teams (KY, OR, TX) will discuss their experiences, lessons learned, and actionable takeaways for local innovation into the future, actively engaging participants.