One of my favorite things about my work is finding fellow change agents, particularly in unlikely places. A few years ago, I was on my way to a meeting with a pediatric gastrointestinal subspecialist to talk about new ways of caring for children with non-organic failure to thrive; essentially, a population of kids who do not have a specific medical condition to explain their difficulty growing in height or weight. This condition is often diagnosed during the first few years o

This February, Genesis Health Consulting will be blogging about the why the practice of change management is a critical enabler of large and small efforts to generate new behaviors, processes, partnerships and outcomes. In the process, we'll highlight some of the science, best practices and tools that leaders can adopt in their own work. In the end, however, it all comes down to this: the best strategies and most sophisticated processes go nowhere if the people leading and ex

This December, many of us will spend time with family, celebrating religious holidays or the arrival of the new year. It has us thinking about how impactful families are to the health of kids. We'll be sharing our thoughts and ideas with you this month on why it's important to consider the family unit when developing policies and programs aimed at improving child health. Here are three ideas about how we can consider the family unit in supporting child health: What if we link

I have had the privilege of serving as a pediatrician for nearly twenty years, and have encountered dozens of children and families who have deeply impacted me. Their stories fuel my drive to transform systems to those that truly produce, sustain and enable health. Cris’ is one of those stories. Cris* is a 13-month-old adorable child who is the third of four siblings all younger than 6 years. I first met Cris and his mother Tanya* when they came for a follow-up appointment f

In the past decade, the explosion of data collection, analysis and mining tools have created tremendous improvements in our understanding of various influences on health such as place, trauma and health-related behaviors. The promise of “big data” – extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions – to also inform how healthcare identifies, profiles and stratifi

In a world where the overwhelming majority of medical research, medical care, and medical spending is tied to adults, kids are sometimes overlooked. The reminder that “kids are not small adults” is repeated often for a reason. Ensuring that kids receive the safest and most effective care requires understanding and attention to risk factors that are unique to children. Our overall health is shaped by many factors, which are often described as the interplay between individual,