7 - Partnering with Pediatric Primary Care to Advance Health Equity
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LockedThis session will describe how partnering with pediatric primary care and caregivers can advance equity for children and families. The session will explore strategies for building partnerships among families, pediatric primary care, and the child welfare system. The presentation will include the sharing of a young child’s experience in child welfare told through the lens of a parent with lived experience as a resource caregiver and adoptive parent and through the lens of the child’s pediatrician. Both will share lessons and strategies from their extensive experience serving children involved with the child welfare system.
Objectives:
- Participants will hear a child’s child welfare story told from the perspective of a parent and a pediatrician to highlight opportunities for advancing equity
- Participants will recognize how partnering with pediatric primary care can advance equity for families
- Participants will explore strategies for building partnerships among families, pediatric primary care, and the child welfare system
Anu Partap, MD (she/her)
Executive Committee Member of the Council on Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care with AAP
American Academy of Pediatrics
Anu Partap, MD, MPH, serves as Medical Director of Health Equity at Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, Texas. For over 20 years, she has been a primary care pediatrician in safety-net, pediatric training settings in the Southwest. Her primary aim is to mitigate the impact of adversity and trauma on child health and educational outcomes through improved integrated systems of care. Anu has worked with broad governmental and philanthropic partnerships to design, fund, and implement new health systems and community-based integrated care programs, research, medical education, and policy improvements. She has had the privilege of learning from all families including those who are recent immigrants, Native American families, families with limited income, survivors of family violence, and diverse families engaged with U.S. foster care and adoption systems. In 2018, she joined Cook Children’s as Medical Director of the Center for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and now serves as Medical Director of Health Equity to help implement system strategies to eliminate health disparities. She is a frequent educator on how to work with families affected by adversity, has served on multiple statewide Boards, and currently serves on the Board of the Texas Pediatric Society and as an executive member of the Council of Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care at the AAP. Anu considers herself a lifelong learner of parenting, partnering, and how best to tackle the open road with her husband, daughters, and two dogs.
Robin van der Merwe (she/her)
Executive Director
Cook Children’s Health Care System
Robin van der Merwe is an Executive Director at Connect First Initiative, an educational resource for helping educators understand the emotional and mental health needs of their students. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Region 3 Foster Care Consortium, serving North Texas, and is an Advisor on the Family Advisory Board for the Rees Jones Center for Foster Care Excellence in Dallas. Robin and her husband, Henk, have been foster/adoptive parents for the last 14 years.
