Future steps
Our efforts suggest that integration of pediatric behavioral health specialists into primary care is feasible, efficacious, and beneficial to children and parents. We have had success at identifying children at risk for exposure to toxic stress early in their lifetimes and providing multigenerational treatment to these children to ensure healthy social-emotional development. We have shown that when we offer mental health treatment within primary care, even in an urban setting where stigma around mental illness runs high, we almost triple the national average of successful linkage to mental health services for school age and adolescent children. However, payment reform is needed to truly achieve population health. We must ensure preventive and multigenerational services are covered so that we may continue to treat children and families within the nonstigmatized and universally accessed setting of primary care.
Dr. Briggs is director of pediatric behavioral health services and Healthy Steps at Montefiore Medical Group and associate professor of clinical pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in New York.