Publications

Karen Fessel is known throughout California for her passionate advocacy to get insurers to pay for the services families need for their children on the autism spectrum. Now, she’s branching out to serve children with other special health care needs.

An important new report presents the first-ever national consensus standards for improving systems of care for children with special health care needs.

Dr. James Marcin is helping realize the promise of telemedicine for children who urgently need specialized care.

For families of children with special health care needs, the idea of managed care can be worrisome. Families fear that in the interest of cost savings and maximizing profits health plans will limit their children's care. A new study by the National Academy for State Health Policy, supported by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, examines how three states, including California, try to ensure that children with special health care needs are identified in managed care organizations and that their needs are assessed and appropriate care provided. The authors propose promising practices that states could adopt to meet the requirements of this population of children.

For families of children with special health care needs, depending on managed care organizations can be worrisome, especially when their children require expensive and/or unusual services. A new study examines the approaches taken by three states, including California, to assuring that children with special health care needs are known to their managed care organization and that their needs are assessed so that appropriate care can be provided.

A new issue brief highlights the disparity in oral health between low-income and affluent children in California, assesses the factors that influence access to care, and offers recommendations.

Dr. Mark Edelstein oversees mental health treatment and social services for some of California’s most troubled kids. With his staff at EMQ FamiliesFirst, Edelstein works to keep children with significant mental health issues in their communities – an important task at a time when the rate of mental health-related hospitalizations of California children and youth is rising.

This series of issue briefs, prepared by the Insure the Uninsured Project and funded by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, examines the impact of the Affordable Care Act on health insurance coverage for children in California, and offers recommendations on how the state might alter existing programs and systems to better serve children.

From her position as director of the Division of Services for Children with Special Health Care Needs in the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Bonnie Strickland takes a national perspective on our fragmented system of care and steps that might be taken to improve it.

Enhancing care coordination by creating an integrated statewide health care information portal for California Children’s Services (CCS) providers is the subject of a new report prepared by Mathematica Policy Research.