The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is launching a five-year initiative to address three urgent issues. With the help of program and funding partners, Upraising Healthy Children aims to dramatically impact and improve children’s health through their lifetime and for generations to come.

Responding to the National Crisis in Pediatric Mental Health

Children and teens need equitable access to a full range of mental health services to buffer the impacts of adversity, trauma, and toxic stress. Pediatricians can play a crucial role and are often the only doctor seeing a young patient with mental health concerns.

Through Upraising Healthy Children, the AAP will provide training on children’s mental health needs to 45,000 pediatricians who together provide care to more than 45 million children.

Creating Community Immunity

The most important factor that leads to parents accepting vaccinations remains their one-on-one contact with their trusted pediatrician. The AAP and its members are uniquely positioned to restore parents’ confidence in vaccinations and protect the lives and health of children and their families.

Upraising Healthy Children will include a multiyear, multiplatform childhood vaccination communications campaign with a coalition of partner organizations and pediatricians to rebuild parental confidence in immunizations.

Affirming Anti-Racist Care for All Children

Academy members envision a future when every child experiences equitable, affirming, and anti-racist health care. Pediatricians and subspecialists will be educated to deliver anti-racist care to diverse children based on race-conscious, evidence-based policies and guidelines. And new pathways for pediatric residents and leaders will be created for groups that are underrepresented in medicine.

Through Upraising Healthy Children, the AAP will lead a transformation in patient care to address the gaps and inequities in the care delivered to children.

Why the AAP

AAP and its membership of 67,000 pediatricians are uniquely suited to lead this critical work. Even amid the highly polarized environment around COVID-19 vaccination, a December 2021 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that, “Pediatricians remain parents’ most trusted source of information on the COVID-19 vaccine for children, including across partisans and across race and ethnicity.”

AAP will leverage 92 years of experience in health care policy, pediatric workforce development, health systems transformation, and advocacy to foster long-term health for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

To learn more, contact us.