By Brandi Slaughter, Interim CEO, Voices for Ohio’s Children

 We all want what’s best for our children – whether they are our patients, our students, our neighbors or our own kids. This shared commitment to the health and well-being of Ohio’s future leaders drove our recent work in Ohio to establish Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) & Developmental Screening recommendations. With less than one in three Ohio kids receiving timely developmental screenings currently, we knew there was room for improvement. More importantly, we knew there were plenty of people who wanted to help.

At Voices for Ohio’s Children, we wanted to develop comprehensive and realistic recommendations that would help more families and health providers proactively track milestones in children’s development and intervene as early as possible. But we certainly couldn’t do it alone. We convened a collaborative and diverse group of stakeholders – including families, managed care providers, and interagency policy officials – to build consensus on how we could improve Ohio’s EPSDT program.

The group we brought together understood that with nearly 85 percent of brain development happening in the first three years of a child’s life, routine screenings during this time are critical. We worked together to assess strengths and challenges facing Ohio’s current EPSDT program and policies, and brainstormed ways to combat our toughest challenges. Over the course of 2015, we developed realistic and actionable short-, medium- and long-term recommendations. When released, these recommendations were praised by policymakers, healthcare providers, and families as an important step toward ensuring that all Ohio’s children get the developmental screenings they need to thrive.

Bringing together diverse perspectives and complementary priorities drove our success and allowed us to develop a wide breadth of recommendations that are both meaningful and actionable. Our recommendations included improving outreach to families, incorporating modern technology in health processes, expanding the providers eligible for reimbursement, improving tracking and referrals across the state, and leveraging existing systems to improve care coordination. As a first step, we developed an EPSDT Toolkit that gives providers and advocates the resources they need to share the importance of routine screenings with parents and families.

The recommendations and the energy they have created are an exciting step toward a brighter future for our kids – and also a true testament to the power of collaboration with a shared goal. By bringing together those who know the issue best, we were able to make real progress toward an Ohio where every child gets the developmental screenings he or she needs to show up ready to learn  and succeed on the first day of school.

You can learn more about our recommendations and the importance of Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment & Developmental Screening here: http://www.raiseyourvoiceforkids.org/Resources