Funded Projects

An extension of the CATCH program, CATCH-On was created to disseminate small-scale CATCH projects that are easy to replicate in other communities. The next CATCH-On project set to launch is called “A Shot to Live,” which aims to train school staff how to prevent and manage anaphylaxis caused by food allergies and ensure students have access to life-saving epinephrine. This project will now be able to be implemented in a new digital format, reaching even more pediatricians and their communities.

This funding will support a training for all AAP Chapter Early Childhood Champions in order to advance important early childhood activities and move forward early childhood best practices and advocacy broadly, while also helping to integrate activities across all AAP chapters. Focusing on early childhood development issues, this training will promote social-emotional development as well as early literacy immersion. The program supports valued community services such as childcare, preschool, home visiting, and parenting programs.

Historically, chapters have reported that lack of funding to support patient/family participation is the #1 barrier to patient/family engagement at the Chapter level. Through this Friends of Children funding, the Family Partnerships Network will be able to award seven Chapter grants in 2020-2021 to promote youth and family engagement.

BLAST! is a first aid and safety course for youth ages 13-17 who are interested in caring for young children in their communities. This fourth edition of BLAST! will be structured as an app-based learning activity that will teach adolescent babysitters key content through a variety of interactive gaming elements. The software will be gamified in a way that captures the user’s attention by awarding points or badges and then an e-certificate, allowing for a more engaged, interactive learning experience in a preferred learning style.

Natural disasters and environment decay impact the health of children more now than ever before due to climate change. Heat-related illness and the expansion of climate-sensitive infectious diseases make climate change an imminent threat to child health. By working with ecoAmerica, a close partner of the AAP, this project aims to develop and implement a blueprint for action by engaging leaders from multisector agencies, organizations, and groups (including adolescents and young adults) to host a National Children’s Health and Climate Leadership Forum. Building outreach and starting the social conversation around this issue will help to mitigate the effects of climate change on children’s health.

In 2019, data from the AAP Periodic Survey of Fellows determined that while, 92% of pediatricians report having had a patient disclose suicidal ideation during a clinical visit at least once in their career, only 57% reported that they felt prepared to counsel around suicide[1]. Funding from the Friends of Children Fund enables the Academy to convene key stakeholders at a Youth Suicide Prevention Summit, where they will discuss a pediatric suicide prevention action plan through topics such as increasing knowledge of suicide risk-factors, training in supportive-care, and spreading the information further to families and clinical staff.

[1] AAP Department of Research. Suicide Rate Rising for US Youth and Pediatricians Commonly Encounter Suicide and Suicidal Ideation in Practice. AAP News. October 2019

Diversifying the pediatric work force is necessary to give children the chance to achieve optimal health. This project will bring more under-represented minorities into pediatrics and inspire them to become leaders in the field. To do this, pipeline programs will be tested and initiated across America, specifically in Historically Black Medical Colleges or those with Centers of Excellence for American Indian/Alaska Native students or Latino Medical Student Association groups (this list is not comprehensive – other groups may apply). The AAP is committed to diversifying the pediatric workforce, and to do so, this will require more under-represented minorities to choose pediatrics as a career. Through mini-grants made possible by the Friends of Children Fund, medical schools will be given the opportunity to design and pilot test a pipeline program for students to help spur an interest in pediatrics. These programs could be for primary school, high school, undergraduate students or for medical students themselves, and the AAP will provide support in highlighting opportunities to be exposed to careers in pediatrics and in seeking potential sponsors and mentors.

Recent media coverage surrounding child abuse has carried inaccurate depictions of the diagnosis procedure has been damaging to pediatricians who cannot defend themselves due to patient privacy protections. This damaging media coverage sows distrust in pediatricians who care for injured children, as well as the systems set up to protect them. This national media relations campaign counters these damaging narratives and replace them with articles that accurately portray the real threats to children and solutions to protect them.

In all 50 states, a preparticipation physical evaluation (PPE) is required before a student can participate in organized sports. Despite their commonality, the requirements vary by state, and the procedure itself may vary depending on the sport as there is no national committee to oversee the process. To ensure the health and safety of young athletes across America, this project will create a virtual quality improvement course to support pediatricians in the implementation of the PPE, from the timing of an exam, setting, clearance for sports participation, and payment for the PPE. The course will also address mental-health, sudden cardiac death, and considerations for special populations.

The Section on Senior Members’ Advocacy Sub-Committee Initiative aims to build a network connecting senior members with early career physicians and pediatric trainees for mentorship as well as to foster bidirectional learning and healthy collaboration around advocacy initiatives to advance child health. This sub-committee will launch this advocacy work at several pilot sites, encouraging partnerships to gain the skills needed to be successful advocates and become leaders in the field.

Firearm related deaths continue to be 1 of the top 3 causes of death in the pediatric population[1]. The Protect Kids campaign aims to increase our Pediatric Trainee members’ knowledge about gun violence and gun injury. Funding will support the creation of educational materials, a gun safety workshop for trainees, and the creation of a website that catalogues all community resources available by state and services provided.

[1] AAP analysis of CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS fatal injury reports.

Suicide continues to be the second leading cause of death among those 10-24 years. As the number of youth affected by mental health conditions continues to grow, pediatricians are a natural resource for parents. According to feedback, pediatricians still feel ill-prepared to address mental health concerns, citing lack of training, experience, and resources. This strategic plan will address the new mental health competencies and meet member needs, including the identification of short-term and long-term goals and objectives, and outlining AAP groups and stakeholder involvement.

There is high demand for pediatric patient education handouts in languages other than English and Spanish. A set of 10 key Pediatric Patient Education handouts will be created in 12 languages to better serve patient populations. In addition to the translation work, the content will be written with and reviewed for culturally sensitive language. The languages, in order of the greatest identified need, are Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic, Vietnamese, French, Korean, Russian, Bengali, Polish, Somali, Haitian Creole, Hmong, and Portuguese. Through Pediatric Care Online the new handouts will be available to download, print, customize, and or/share through email, physician portal, or EHR.

Increases in screen time, as well as a lack of safe play spaces are keeping kids indoors which have social and psychological ramifications, aiding in an increasing chronic disease trend. This AAP convening will pull together pediatricians to create a collaborative action plan to increase the amount of time children spend in nature.

It is imperative that families trust vaccines: for the sake of their own children’s health, as well as the health of children who have adverse reactions to vaccines and therefore rely on herd immunity to stay healthy. In order to promote trust in parents, we need a good understanding of what messages resonate best with them. The Academy will conduct formative research and develop and test a message framework to be used in communicating about vaccines with the aim of creating an overarching message strategy or “anthem” that the AAP, pediatricians, and partner organizations can use in campaigns and communications to increase parents’ confidence and acceptance of vaccines.

Injury prevention is not a topic of focus in graduate and continuing education curricula, and pediatricians receive little training in how to deliver guidance to families or advocate for safety-focused policies and initiatives. This 18-month pilot learning collaborative with ten primary care practice teams will build pediatric practices’ knowledge and capacity in delivering evidence-informed injury prevention anticipatory guidance. All teams will receive foundational injury prevention knowledge with focuses tailored to their patient populations. This collaborative will create and test a foundation of injury prevention principles that will be leveraged for future injury prevention guidance and resources.

Currently, only select pediatricians and subspecialists understand the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric mental health disorders well enough to ensure the health of patients. The AAP is sponsoring a live 2 ½ day course in this area in April 2020, and hopefully annually. Standardized Patients will be hired and trained for two offerings of the live course, so that attendees can get a better understanding of the material. Standardized Patients enable attendees to role play and learn through experience interviewing “patients” with mental health disorders.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ), a 4-item suicide risk screening instrument with excellent sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value for use in medical settings in the USA. The aim of this project is to validate the ASQ in both Argentina and Ethiopia for use by child healthcare providers who may see at-risk patients. These countries have been uniquely affected by youth suicide and this screening tool can lead to earlier intervention for those in need of mental health services.

The AAP will produce several short videos that communicate the proud history and achievements of the organization and pediatricians. The videos will document the soul and enduring commitment of pediatricians to their patients. The videos are intended to be used for the 90th Anniversary of AAP but will be produced so that they can be utilized to promote the value of pediatrics and pediatricians beyond this event.