Social Pediatrics

The Comprehensive Health Care Center (CHCC) is a community health center offering the following services available for children, adolescents, and adults:

We recognize that many factors – social, environmental and family – affect a child's health. We also know that many families have important strengths that help their children stay healthy, including a positive outlook, self-advocacy, family cultures, and religious and community relationships.

Most importantly, we know that no one knows better what a child needs to stay healthy than his or her parents and family.

So our physicians are committed to partnering with parents to care for their children in the best way possible.

A general physical with any doctor at CHCC will involve discussions of both "straight" medical issues (immunizations, anemia, asthma, etc.) as well as "social issues" (how your child does in school, behavior issues, housing issues, etc.) The physicians would like to hear about anything you think is important in the care of your child.

If your child needs to see a specialist (Pulmonary, Cardiology, etc.), we will refer him or her to a specialist at CHAM. The specialist doctors will then write or call your child's doctor with the recommendations for his or her care.

If your child needs to be admitted to the hospital, your doctor at CHCC will supervise your child's care at CHAM.

The Social Pediatrics Faculty and Residents also conduct community-based projects to learn about the best care for our patients. Some projects in the past have included:

• Learning about the use of folk-remedies that include mercury, and the effects of mercury on children.
• Learning about folk-remedies that many families use to help treat asthma.
• Setting up programs to help young children develop better reading skills.
• Improving the management of asthma for children in public schools.
• Testing ways that doctors can do a better job in treating childhood asthma.
• Finding out about the best ways to help parents quit smoking.
• Learning ways to teach parents about safety for their children.
• Learning ways to help make it easier for mothers who want to breastfeed.

Tania Shiminski-Maher, MS, CPNP