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Learn how healing happens through partnerships — helping connect families to care and support when they need it most.

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Afghan Refugees: From Chaos to Care

After the chaotic and frightening exit from Afghanistan, refugee families coming through Philadelphia International Airport were offered a calm clinic where CHOP doctors evaluated ill children and arranged for their ongoing healthcare needs.

CHOP continued to care for children while they were in the refugee camp at Joint Base Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and after local resettlement. Learn More

Young female refugee

Humble Leader

Emergency Department physician Sage Myers, MD, MSCE, medical director of emergency preparedness at CHOP, led Philadelphia’s effort to assess the health of some 30,000 of Afghan refugees arriving here and to arrange for urgent and ongoing care, as needed. 6ABC recognized her work.

From Airport to Refugee Camp

As part of Operation Allies Welcome, a team of clinicians triaged ill child and adult Afghans at the airport, providing full medical evaluations to 1,600-plus, and continued to treat children at CHOP as they awaited resettlement.

  • 47

    Children required immediate emergency room treatment

  • 477

    Children came for care to the ER and specialty care locations, including 52 kids with medical complexity

  • 93

    Hospitalizations of children

Learn More About

CHOP’s Refugee Health Program

Operation Allies Welcome

Rajwa holding a doll, wearing a unicorn headband
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2022

Dermatology E-consults Ease Access to Care

Skin complaints among children are common. Unfortunately, so are long wait times for in-person pediatric dermatology appointments, due to a shortage of specialists.

Waiting for answers to a child's health condition can cause undue stress and worry for parents. CHOP's provider-to-provider teledermatology program has proven to be a feasible solution, providing care quickly and effectively.

The program expanded to eight total Primary Care locations in the CHOP Care Network and recently achieved preliminary Medicaid reimbursement approval, which is a major success. Learn More

Physician reviewing an e-consult provided photo on a computer

The Power of a Picture

Dermatology is a visually oriented specialty that lends itself well to remote consultation.

Pediatricians at participating CHOP Care Network sites can send a picture of a child's skin issue through the Electronic Medical Record system to the Dermatology team for a consultation. The Dermatology team typically responds within just a few days, as opposed to patients having to wait months for an in-person consult.

How E-consults Benefit Families

More than 2,500 cases have been completed since 2020, saving 55,340 miles of travel for families.

  • Average diagnostic turnaround time for patient families decreases from 6 months to just 33 hours
  • No need to take time off from work or school
  • No travel time
  • No wait time
  • No visit time with a specialist (unless e-consult determines one is needed)
  • Improved patient and family satisfaction
  • Better outcomes
  • Lower overall healthcare costs
Mother and daughter looking at tablet together
The E-Consult program in dermatology has become an important part of my clinical practice. I love the fact that I can save families time, money and the anxiety of waiting for an answer, while also equipping pediatricians to manage their dermatology patients. A well-taken photo truly is worth a thousand words!

Amanda Moon, MD, CHOP Pediatric Dermatologist

The teledermatology program plans to expand to all CHOP Primary Care sites in the future. CHOP is also exploring using e-consults for other subspecialties to improve access to care and the patient family experience.

Learn more about the ways CHOP is using technology to enhance care to help children everywhere
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2024

Help for the Helpers

Helping students deal with the trauma they’ve experienced is incredibly rewarding, and also can leave teachers and school staff feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced. The Stress-Less Initiative© gives school personnel skills to manage the secondary traumatic stress they feel so they can continue to provide the best support to students.

It is a collaboration of CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention and Healthier Together Initiative, the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania and the community-based provider Uplift Center for Grieving Children. Learn More

CHOP Helps Kids — and Those Who Support Them

The Stress-Less Initiative complements the CHOP-supported trauma counseling program for students, provided by Uplift, as way to improve mental health in the community.

School personnel who participated in the Stress-Less Initiative said:

We spend a lot of time transferring coping skills to the younger people who we work with, but sometimes neglect to transfer those same skills to our co-workers. And I think the Stress-Less Initiative was a good way in which to help us to do that. I can say from my perspective, it’s helped me exercise a lot more empathy and not necessarily look as much at these children’s behaviors but look at what’s driving the behavior. So, if I could address the driver, then the behaviors will sort themselves.

Learn More About

Collaboration between CHOP and Penn’ Netter Center to improve youth mental health

CHOP’s Healthier Together Initiative

Growing Resilience in Teens (GRIT)

Stress-Less Initiative

Uplift Center for Grieving Children

  • 120

    Youth and their caregivers received trauma, grief and/or social support services through GRIT. (FY22)

  • 90+

    Staff members at two West Philadelphia schools participated in trauma-informed care and stress reduction workshops through Stress-Less.

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2022