Friday, June 27, 2008
Editorial: CHIP's legacy is healthier children
The nonprofit is marking a milestone: 20 years of devotion to making the area's youngest residents healthier. It has a lot to celebrate.
From the RoundTable blog
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Think of holistic health care on a community scale, brought to needy children in their homes, and you've got CHIP.
The Roanoke Valley has it, rather, and it has been of immeasurable service.
Twenty years ago, the father of CHIP -- given name, the Child Health Investment Partnership of Roanoke Valley -- conceived a notion for getting poor children good health care from birth through their preschool years, thereby dramatically improving their lives.
In the decades since Roanoke County pediatrician Douglas Pierce, with the help of Salem businessman and philanthropist Cabell Brand, brought the idea to fruition, CHIP has helped more than 13,000 children. The nonprofit's menu of services has grown and the concept has spread, so that now Pierce's brainchild serves as a model in 11 Virginia communities.
But its heart remains a corps of nurses and family case managers who make home visits to their young clients and the children's families -- often single mothers not much older than children themselves.
Nurses found from the start, CHIP Executive Director Robin Haldiman says, that they couldn't improve children's health care through health services alone: Families can't worry about immunizations when they've been evicted from their homes. So case managers, who have at least an associate's degree in early childhood development, also work with children and their caregivers.
CHIP's holistic approach includes services that range from providing transportation to doctor's appointments, to linking families to needed community services, to teaching parenting skills and more.
CHIP teams have taken on more intensive work over the years, including working with children with emotional disorders or whose parents have either undiagnosed or diagnosed but untreated mental illnesses.
The program has stretched, too, to meet more needs: Haldiman headed a coalition that brought a pediatric dental clinic to the city, for just one example.
CHIP was also instrumental in getting a grant to improve early learning for preschoolers, and in putting the money to good use. CHIP is part of an areawide coalition that provides caregivers with the information they need to nurture the brain development of their young charges.
CHIP has its sights set on new challenges, such as a pediatric asthma project -- a reminder that so much remains to be done to provide all children with the health care they need.
Today, as CHIP celebrates its 20th anniversary, the community has ample reason to join in -- and to pitch in to further its work.
