St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Center for the Urban Child
Title: Pediatric Navigators
Student Interns:
Dimitrios Bakatsias
Drexel University College of Medicine
Megan List
Drexel University College of Medicine
Academic Preceptor:
Stacy Ellen, DO, FAAP
Drexel University College of Medicine, St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children
Community Preceptor:
Renee Kottenhahn, MD, FAAP
St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Drexel University College of Medicine
Kathryn Stroup, MD
St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Drexel University College of Medicine
Community Site:
The Center for the Urban Child (CUC) is an expansive outpatient facility on the St. Christopher’s campus. There, a multidisciplinary team cares for many families who face complex challenges due to financial, social, educational, and cultural barriers to care. St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children | Tower Health
Team’s Experience:
The Bridging the Gaps student interns served as an integral part of the medical team, helping to ensure that the needs of patients and families were met. Working more than 15 hours a week in the well child clinic at St. Christopher’s Center for the Urban Child (CUC), the interns improved the efficiency of patient visits by performing social screenings, providing resources, and offering counseling for the areas of oral health, reading, and asthma. The interns also acted as patient advocates, connecting families with complex social needs to the clinic’s available social workers, community health workers, or legal aid services. In addition, the interns worked to identify information gaps in different resources and programs and worked to create fliers to promote understanding. This project involved newborn insurance and early childhood education. The interns presented the supplemental information to the physicians at the CUC.
Reflections
“Having the opportunity to continue as a pediatric navigator has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I have enjoyed getting to work as a part of the St. Christopher’s team to help support families. Whether that be through providing resources in the community, looping in a social worker, or getting to chat with the family about the importance of topics like oral health and reading, there was always something tangible that I could do to improve the visit. In addition, getting to work on the newborn insurance project to help newborn families enroll in insurance properly has been an eye-opening experience. There was so much that I didn’t know about the process, let alone what families knew about it. I’ve been able to talk to families, the registration team, and providers to figure out what the best way to address the issue is while simultaneously getting to witness resident teaching moments. Aside from that, getting to talk to the families, getting to know them, and getting to know their stories has been nothing short of a gift.”
Dimitrios Bakatsias
“I am incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to continue as a part of the team at St. Christopher’s. The energy and teamwork that is displayed by the staff is truly inspiring. This summer I’ve witnessed how St. Christopher’s functions not only as a medical clinic, but also as a social support hub for families. It’s a place where healthcare is intertwined with advocacy, access to legal aid, food assistance, housing navigation, and mental health services. I’ve had the opportunity to dig deep into many of the resources and expand what I’ve pictured as part of a medical visit. One of my main projects involved compiling and organizing resources to help families navigate early childhood education, particularly Philly Pre-K and Head Start. I came to understand how complex and inequitable the enrollment process can be, leaving me both frustrated with the system and hopeful that it will one day improve. Ultimately, the biggest gift of all was getting to talk with so many families about their lives. Being invited into those moments of trust, whether joyful or difficult, reminded me that medicine is as much about listening and connecting as it is about diagnosis and treatment. It was a privilege to be part of their care.”
Megan List