The Nation’s Health: Prioritizing health for children in foster care system

A foster child’s home may change multiple times, but pediatrician Annalisa Behnken, MD, FAAP, wants to make sure that wherever a child is living, her or his medical home stays consistent.

As medical director of the Healthy Beginnings Foster Care Clinic at the University of New Mexico, Behnken only gets one half-day a week to see as many kids as possible, but she makes it count.

“We provide as much as we can because we’re a small operation,” Behnken told The Nation’s Health. “We try to provide a medical home for these kids…we do vision and hearing screenings. We screen for anemia and lead poisoning. We screen for the need for counseling and other medical referrals.”

Visit The Nation’s Health online to continue reading this story from the Sept. 2016 issue.

Source: http://www.publichealthnewswire.org/?p=15931