Research Track

Project CLIMB integrates mental health services into a pediatric primary care academic training center at The Children’s Hospital by providing access to on-site mental health services in the context of a medical home and simultaneously providing training and education to pediatric providers to help them deliver comprehensive services. Evaluation of the program is ongoing through quality improvement efforts, clinical informatics, and various research projects.
The program is based on the fact that children from low income populations and their families typically have more limited access to appropriate mental health services. At the same time, these children have higher mental health and psychosocial concerns than privately insured children who typically do not live in poverty. Pediatric primary care settings provide continuous and comprehensive services that are accessible to the majority of children and their families, and as such, are ideally suited to promote optimal development through the provision of expanded services that address parental concerns, key developmental tasks, psychosocial factors, and mental health issues. Importantly, clinical skills needed to identify and address children’s and parents’ developmental and psychosocial issues have not been central in pediatric or family medicine education. Project CLIMB addresses these two critical areas in pediatric primary care.