Community Pediatrics

Our Community Pediatrics Program focuses on the health and well-being of children and adolescents in Northern Manhattan. Through community-academic partnerships, population health initiatives, and innovative pediatric training experiences, the program aims to:

• address root causes of illness, such as childhood obesity
• improve health literacy
• break the link between poverty and poor health
• prepare middle- and high-school students for careers in biomedical science and medicine
• incorporate early literacy into pediatric primary care
• address mental health issues during the elementary school years
• reduce childhood asthma

In 2022 department members launched new community initiatives and strengthened existing programs. Here are some highlights:

Food FARMacia: Addressing Root Causes of Illness

When kids don’t have healthy—or enough—food at home, obesity, attention or behavior problems, delayed growth, and other health consequences can follow, says Dr. Dodi Meyer, the department’s Vice Chair for Community Health. Food FARMacia, a mobile food market for at-risk members of the Washington Heights community, is a household food insecurity intervention embedded in our pediatric primary care settings. During clinical care encounters, members of our healthcare team identify families eligible for participation in Food FARMacia, which is a collaboration between the West Side Campaign Against Hunger and NewYork-Presbyterian’s Choosing Healthy and Active Lifestyles for Kids (CHALK). In response to COVID, Food FARMacia transitioned from a biweekly in-person program stationed outside the Washington Heights Family Health Center to a home delivery model. In the Washington Heights–Inwood community, 3,581 families are now registered—a total of 49,028 individuals. Families receive between 25 to 30 pounds of food with each delivery, and the program has distributed 3,605,878 pounds of food since its launch. A 2022 study by Dr. Jennifer Woo Baidal and colleagues in the journal Nutrients demonstrates the promise of the Food FARMacia model for reaching families disproportionately burdened by food insecurity and for increasing their access to emergency food assistance.

COMBO Playdate: Giving Back to the Community

On a sunny Sunday in May, a few hundred Washington Heights residents gathered at Haven Plaza to join the fun at the first Annual Playdate put on by Columbia’s COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes (COMBO) initiative. With more than 100 participating researchers and physicians spanning Columbia University’s schools and departments, the COMBO collaboration is investigating the impact of both COVID-19 infections and the pandemic on the developing fetus, future child health, and future maternal health. More than 1,300 mother-baby pairs have generously donated their time to research on the potential long-term impact of COVID-19 on future generations. The May event was a celebration of the resilience of mothers who have given birth during the pandemic, a chance for them to meet other families and their babies, and an expression of the COMBO team’s gratitude to those who participated in research studies. Outdoor games, arts and crafts, health-conscious sponsors, local businesses, and community-based organizations provided attendees with information and tools to promote maternal health and infant development. “COMBO's guiding principle is ‘Partnering with our community, for our community,’" says COMBO founder and chair, pediatrician Dani Dumitriu, MD, PhD. “This event was our first major effort to give back to community members.”

Community Research Advisory Board

Health care organizations that want to speedily translate promising clinical practices and innovations into community settings need an efficient and supportive infrastructure that integrates feedback from community members and organizations and ensures that research is meaningful to the community. In 2022 the department created such an infrastructure by establishing the Columbia Children’s Research Community Advisory Board. The new board’s mission is to improve the health of children and families in our surrounding communities by integrating community voices, facilitating community engagement, and promoting community linkages. The board includes professionals who live and work in the community and who represent a range of domains related to family health: housing and food security, mental health, schools, perinatal health, faith-based organizations, environmental justice, and local businesses. The board is led by Dodi Meyer, MD, Elizabeth Cohn, NP, PhD, FAAN, and Jesse Weiss, MSN, RN. At the board’s quarterly meetings, department researchers have been able to meet with the board to present their work. Presentations to date include:

• COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes (COMBO) (Drs. Kelli Hall and Dani Dumitriu)
• An overview of the Department of Pediatrics (Dr. Jordan Orange)
• Piloting a Pediatric Health Equity and Quality Dashboard and Implementation Roadmap (Dr. Katie Nash)
• Project GUARDIAN: Genomic Uniform-screening Against Rare Diseases in All Newborns/GENE Genetic evaluation of newborns (Dr. Wendy Chung).

The board also collaborated to create a letter of support for Dr. Anna Penn and our Division of Neonatology as part of the division’s application to join the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Neonatal Research Network.

NewYork-Presbyterian’s Ambulatory Care Network

Through NewYork-Presbyterian’s Ambulatory Care Network, our faculty members work together with the hospital to offer many specialty programs for children and adolescents in the surrounding area. These programs include: