community health
A person’s health is determined more by zip code than genetic code.
Dayton Children's Child Health Pavilion is unique in the nation. It combines comprehensive primary and preventative care to patients and families, as well as needed wrap-around services and non-medical community resources for children facing adverse childhood experiences that negatively impact their health.
The Dudley family is just one example of how community health outreach impacts a whole family:
helping families breathe a little easier
Victoria Dudley is a single mother of four boys under age 6. a few years ago, she attended a parent asthma meeting at Cleveland Elementary School in Dayton.
“Two of my boys suffer from asthma,” says Victoria. “I went to the meeting to learn more about what I could do to help manage their asthma better.” She learned that her family qualified to receive services from Dayton Children’s Hospital’s Family Resource Connection to help manage her children’s asthma.
The program offers home visits by a Dayton Children’s community health worker, like Synthia Copher. Synthia met with the Dudley family at their home and helped them identify asthma triggers that might be affecting the kids’ ability to breath. Triggers can include dust, mold, pests, animal dander or cigarette smoke. She works with families to mitigate triggers while connecting them to additional resources, which can include everything from education resources, to food and utility assistance, and
even activities for the kids, such as after-school and summer programs.
Synthia also helps families create asthma action plans and obtain medication and medical devices, including inhalers. She follows up with each family to ensure they are working together to change behaviors and eliminate triggers that may negatively affect the children’s asthma.
Working with a community health worker, families can be connected to resources like smoke detectors, car seats, vacuums, pillow covers, and more to ensure all the children could be healthy and safe in their home and while traveling.
Many of the supplies that the hospital provides to families like Victoria’s are purchased through donated funds. Items like air filters, bedding, mattress covers, ‘green’ cleaning kits, and vacuums are essential to helping provide kids with a healthy environment in which to live and grow.
Victoria has embraced recommendations for handling dust – an asthma trigger – by deep cleaning her home regularly. “I’m thankful for the home visit program at Dayton Children’s because I now know some of the things I can do to make my home safer for my children,” says Victoria.
you can make a difference
Your gift to Dayton Children’s will help provide the necessary equipment and special features that are needed to make these programs a reality, and will provide healing and hope for our patients and their families.
