June 9, 2015

Novel Interventions in Children's Healthcare has been selected as one of four recipients of the Association of American Medical Colleges 2014 Clinical Care Innovation Challenge Award. 

NICH is an innovative program that integrates medical care with behavioral therapy and case management to support at-risk pediatric patients and their families. Established in 2011 at OHSU, it's led by Michael Harris, Ph.D. (pictured), chief of pediatric psychology in the Institute on Development and Disability at OHSU and professor of pediatrics in the OHSU School of Medicine. 

Here's an excerpt from a recent feature article about it: 

Michael Harris, Ph.D., has been a pediatric psychologist for nearly 30 years and has found himself inescapably drawn to the most challenging and difficult cases.

Take one 12-year-old female patient who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 7*. At various times, she lived in the homes of her stepmother and father, her grandmother and her mother. She was exposed to violence and substance abuse in her mother’s home and her father’s home and was thought to be a victim of sexual assaults. She didn’t inject her insulin on a regular schedule. She was kept out of school for long periods because the school was fearful of her high blood sugars, and there was no school nurse. And in one two-month period, she was hospitalized 22 times with suspected stress-induced insulin resistance.

Patients like her confound the medical system, those with serious and complex medical conditions compounded by psychosocial and family problems – major league challenges, as Dr. Harris described it. Read the full story in the Spring 2015 issue of Bridges magazine.

The AAMC Innovation Challenge award recognizes and rewards medical schools for innovative and transformative initiatives in care delivery to advance quality and improve patient outcomes. The other recipients of the 2014 award were Emory University, Duke Medicine and Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth. View the announcement.