Student stories: Lourdes Valdez, Online MPH Summer 2019

In light of recent COVID-19 shelter in place orders, non-essential pediatric visits in my clinic have been canceled. This created challenges for ongoing developmental and behavioral assessments for children. My team and I decided early on to partner with  “Help Me Grow”  to continue regular assessments and connect children and their families to online-screenings and resources using their web-based platform. The “Help me grow” system model for my county just got launched last month. We just made it accessible from our website and have become partners on the implementation, and it  will help us provide continuity of care, case management, and improved access to resources. We hope to continue to grow and spread this model across all the pediatric clinics within our county, so our children will benefit from this system model.

I am almost halfway through on my MPH training, and already feel humbly empowered to become a better team leader and have become more empathetic and aware of the social determinants of health of the children and families I serve, doing the best I can to help them reach their best potential.