OBJECTIVE To provide a baseline measure of the proportion of US children who meet the Maternal and Child Health Bureau's core outcomes for children with special health care needs (CSHCN). Those core outcomes include the following: 1) families of CSHCN will partner in decision making and will be satisfied with the services that they receive; 2) CSHCN will receive coordinated, ongoing comprehensi...

On March 21, 2010, the United States Congress passed the most comprehensive healthcare reform bill since the formation of Medicare. The legislation’s greatest impact will be to improve access for nearly 50 million Americans who are presently uninsured. Yet the bill does little to tackle the fundamental problems of the payment and delivery systems— problems that have resulted in major quality ga...

About the author: I am a community pediatrician and since January 2006 have served as chief medical officer of Children’s Health Fund (CHF), a national not-for-profit organization based in New York that supports a national network of 24 programs that provide comprehensive health care services to medically high-risk children and families. Patients served include the homeless, those who live in r...

The objective of this study was to describe the experience of educational and healthcare activities undertaken in a community regarding gynecological and breast cancer, in women with gynecological or breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy in the postoperative period, and also with their families or caregivers as part of an extension project. Activities were organized in two ways: as prevention s...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to report the findings of the National Survey of Children With Special Health Care Needs regarding parent perceptions of the extent to which children with special health care needs (CSHCN) have access to a medical home. METHODS Five criteria, selected to reflect the characteristics of a medical home as defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP...

This study has the objective of understanding the training of nurses for comprehensive health care. It used data from interviews with teachers, students and service nurses submitted to discourse analysis. There is an understanding of comprehensive care in the training of nurses from the perspective of establishing a healthcare model in which care is directed to the patient. There are reflection...

This literature review focuses on dentistry's role in comprehensive health care for the elderly. The authors discuss the need for an interdisciplinary approach. They begin by analyzing the current situation in geriatric dentistry and related problems in Brazil, relating primarily to the lack of specific studies and human resources with training in geriatrics and gerontology. The authors emphasi...

Despite criticism that health reform legislation will result in cuts to Medicare, the bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as President Obama's proposal, contain provisions that would strengthen the program by reducing costs for prescription drugs, expanding coverage for preventive care, providing more help for low-income beneficiaries, and supporting accessible,...

In the era of widespread access to antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV survive; however, this comes with new experiences of comorbidities and HIV-related disability posing new challenges to rehabilitation professionals and an already fragile health system in Southern Africa. Public health approaches to HIV need to include not only prevention, treatment and support but also rehabilita...

Greater numbers of infants and young children with increasingly complicated and serious physical, mental health, and developmental problems are being placed in foster care. All children in foster care need to receive initial health screenings and comprehensive assessments of their medical, mental, dental health, and developmental status. Results of these assessments must be included in the cour...