Frances Chalmers, MD, FAAP
Trustee, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Michael Dudas, MD, FAAP
Past President, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Since WCAAP’s fall 2019 retreat, the Chapter has aspired to become the lead agency for a Pediatric Improvement Partnership in our state and we’ve been learning about Improvement Partnership structures and funding over the past year. Pediatric Improvement Partnerships facilitate long-term collaboration of stakeholders invested in health care quality, joined by a common purpose to improve child health. At a state-level, through forming a Pediatric Improvement Partnership, we aim to bring together the most influential partners and stakeholders to chart a course and seek funding to make meaningful, measurable improvements in child health. At the clinic level, this means providing a centralized organization and backbone to support cohorts of clinics’ iterative improvements in particular clinical areas. In other words, the clinic-facing role of a Pediatric Improvement Partnership is a quality improvement collaborative.
Toward these strategic goals, we are excited to share that WCAAP has been awarded a two-year grant from Public Health Seattle King County’s Best Starts for Kids to establish a Pediatric Improvement Partnership to increase adolescent immunization coverage rates in King County. Through this initiative, King County Child Health Improvement Partnership (K-CHIP) we will bring together key stakeholders across the health care system that will advance quality improvement efforts in the clinical setting as well as coordinate efforts aimed at reducing systemic barriers to increasing vaccination coverage.
WCAAP will be partnering with Seattle Children’s in this work and is incredibly fortunate to have Doug Opel, MD, MPH, FAAP joining forces with our Executive Director, Sarah Rafton, to lead the initiative. Annika Hoffsteter, MD, PhD, MPH, FAAP and Joel Tieder, MD, MPH, FAAP will provide QI expertise and experience in increasing coverage rates. Tatiana Sarkhosh, program manager at WCAAP will support the initiative.
“WCAAP is excited to have such a strong partnership and resources to reduce preventable disease. We are also grateful for the opportunity to facilitate a long-term collaboration of stakeholders invested in health care quality, joined by a common purpose of improving child health.” –Sarah Rafton, MSW, Executive Director, WCAAP.
K-CHIP and the partnership of our organizations provide an ideal launching pad for a future statewide Pediatric Improvement Partnership and our county-level experiences will inform and strengthen future statewide efforts. To learn more, please contact Tatiana Sarkhosh.