AAP Voices Blog

Massachusetts is a well known “hot spot” for COVID-19 illness and deaths.

Faced with the realization that families were delaying routine visits for pediatric care, the Cambridge Health Alliance and Cambridge Family Health/North launched a pilot program of home visits for children under the age of 2 to address this urgent need.

A safe and effective home visit protocol was quickly designed and implemented beginning April 1. We provide anticipatory guidance and vaccinations in families’ homes.

My wonderful scribe, Emily Caron, and I conduct these visits — with adequate PPE.

Our visit mimics what we’d do in the office as much as possible: We administer vaccines, spend time talking about the child’s growth, development and behavior as well as answering parents' questions.

We decided to focus on children younger than 2 to have the most impact in a positive way. Babies are kept up to date on their vaccinations and we help avoid outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

As for the PPE, Emily and I both wear scrubs and masks in the car, as we travel together to the appointments. At each family’s house, we put on a new mask and a face shield, we Purell our hands and put on gloves.

When we leave the house, we take it all off, clean the face shield and put our car masks back on before heading to the next appointment. We see 12-15 children each week, and I do televisits three days a week, as well.

We have found this program to be a successful, safe, low risk and low cost intervention to both support families and maintain vaccination rates during this pandemic. Families are grateful and relieved to keep their children up to date on vaccinations.

These visits have provided an invaluable learning opportunity for Emily, a recent college graduate in the midst of her medical school applications. On my part, with so many of my colleagues deployed on the front line, taking care of adults with COVID-19 disease, I am grateful to be on the back line, contributing to the care of children in the time of the pandemic.

What is old is new again.

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*The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the American Academy of Pediatrics.