About PARENT

Why PARENT?

Why do we need a new model of pediatric preventive care?

PARENT seeks to address key gaps in well-child care (WCC) for low-income and marginalized families through relationship-based preventive care services.

What is a well-child care (WCC) visit?

These are the “check-up” visits that children have with a primary care provider. These visits are most frequent in the first few years of life and are a key opportunity to address a range of physical, developmental, behavioral, social, and psychosocial health concerns that a family may have.

Key Features of the PARENT Model of Care

The Parent Coach

The addition of the Parent Coach, a central element of the PARENT model of care, adds a much-needed member to the WCC team in the delivery of preventive care services.

Parent Coaches…

  • Are trusted community members who are familiar with the community and local resources.

  • Receive extensive training in the provision of WCC services.

  • Address concerns related to anticipatory guidance topics, family social and psychosocial needs, and development and behavior, and connect families to community resources.

Text Messaging System

The PARENT model of care uses a text messaging system to reinforce key education and guidance between visits.

Automated age-specific messages include:

  • Weekly guidance on anticipatory guidance, health education, developmental promotion tips, and visit reminders.

  • Helpful links to educational videos, websites, and other resources.

The Pre-Visit Screening

The PARENT model of care creates a more robust process for identifying the family’s needs by using a pre-visit screening tool during the WCC visit.

The pre-visit screening asks parents about their:

  • Priorities for anticipatory guidance topics

  • Concerns for development or behavior

  • Social and psychosocial needs

The Optimized Visit

The PARENT model of care creates a more family-centered WCC visit that increases the amount of time the WCC team has with the family to identify needs and build relationships, discuss key education and guidance topics, address parental concerns, and ensure connection to community resources.

Although the optimized flow of a PARENT visit will need to be adapted to each clinical site, a helpful framework for the visit flow is shown below.

PARENT Visit Flow

  • 1. Pre-Visit Screening

    Parents complete the pre-visit screening, which includes questions about the family’s priorities for education and guidance (anticipatory guidance), parental concerns for development and behavior, and social and psychosocial needs.

  • 2. Initial Exam

    A nurse or medical assistant completes rooming for the family, taking the child’s weight, measurement, and vitals.

  • 3. Parent Coach Visit

    The PARENT Coach meets with the family to: a) discuss their priorities for anticipatory guidance, b) address development or behavior concerns, and c) provide community resources for any social or psychosocial needs. On average, a Coach may spend 10 to 20 minutes with a family, depending on their needs.

  • 4. Coach - Clinician Handoff

    The PARENT Coach documents their visit in the electronic health record, and a summary is available in real-time for the clinician to review before their visit. When necessary, a “warm hand-off” is used to discuss any significant concerns the Coach wants to bring to the clinician’s attention.

  • 5. Clinician Visit

    The clinician completes their physical exam, addresses any clinical needs, and can engage the parent in an in-depth discussion of 1-2 topics of concern, as the Coach visit has already covered multiple areas for education and guidance.

  • 6. Visit Close Out

    The family receives an after-visit summary and all relevant referrals and resources before their discharge.

A PARENT Story:

Can I see Rosa, please?

One day, a mother came in for her infant’s newborn visit, but shortly after, the clinic lost contact with her. The mother’s cell number no longer worked, and she missed her follow-up visits. But one day, seemingly out of the blue, the mother came to clinic, when the baby was jus over 4 months of age. The mom went straight to the clinic front desk, and said “Can I see Rosa, please?”
Rosa, the PARENT Coach, was at the clinic that day, doing her usual work of building relationships with parents, and meeting their preventive care needs. Rosa came out, met with the mom, found out that she and baby were experiencing homelessness and had no place to go. Rosa was able to connect the mother with emergency housing, find additional support for the family, and reconnect them to the clinic. Rosa was a bicultural, bilingual community health worker who was embedded in the early childhood WCC team at Community Health Care clinic in Tacoma, Washington, a federally qualified health center. She served as the clinic's PARENT Coach.
It takes a team to provide parents with all the support they need during early childhood. Community Health Workers can be an integral part of this team and substantially improve care for families.

What Parents Are Saying about PARENT…

“The PARENT Coach researched a facility where I could get more help, it made me feel really special.”

“The Parent Coach would come into the room when [the clinician] was seeing another patient. They were never in the room together, which I liked because I was able to have more one-on-one time with the providers.”

“At first, I didn’t ask many questions because I was afraid to, but over time I began to trust my PARENT Coach, and I began to be open to asking anything.”

“I think it’s really good for someone to sit down and listen to you while you’re waiting for the doctor to come in…the Parent Coach would come in and we’d talk, and then by the time the doctor came, she’d just have to see him and then I’ll be done, and the questions wouldn’t be there anymore.”

Interested in our Current Study?