2024 Children's of Alabama/UAB Annual Report

“ “What STEP has allowed us to do is to put teams and working groups together to determine what successful practices from pediatric care should or could be brought into the adult clinics.”

– Betsy Hopson, Ph.D, MSHA

Health Professions to create a curriculum of at home therapy and potentially telemedicine, so we have a toolbox of therapy at home.”

you think about it in terms of lifespan, what makes it work well from 0–18? Why was the family so comfortable? Let’s adopt those practices with the adult patients. And then we have insights such as when the adult providers say, ‘I see patients who are 21 and don’t know they can get pregnant.’ That calls for education on the pediatric side. There is a two way education stream.” The lifespan model has potential beyond Down syndrome, Khatri points out. “There are so many conditions that we see in pediatrics that don’t have a good home: autism, dual diagnoses,” she said. “Is this a framework for other conditions that also cross over from the pediatric to the adult world? We aim to find out.”

The link between pediatric and adult services also means that good ideas can be quickly shared. “One of the things that has been successful at Children’s of Alabama is recognizing sensory needs and the development of sensory pathways” for patients with autism, Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities, Hopson said. “What STEP has allowed us to do is to put teams and working groups together to determine what successful practices from pediatric care should or could be brought into the adult clinics. If we know that multidisciplinary clinics work well or that care coordination works well in pediatrics, we can adapt these ideas. When

2024 Academic Annual Report

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