In an effort to unify fragmented behavioral healthcare in Philadelphia, Drexel University’s School of Education and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children (SCHC) have partnered together to provide vital behavioral healthcare to low-income populations. Via an interdisciplinary approach encompassing physicians, pediatric school psychologists, psychologists, behavior analysts, social workers, nursing, and specialty area physicians (e.g. psychiatrists), the two organizations are striving to deliver a community-based grassroots approach to integrated evidence-based behavioral health services and comprehensive care. Identifying a need for a sustainable outpatient behavioral health clinic, SCHC and Drexel University will fill two vital roles to ensure the clinic can address the needs of an underserved and under-resourced population where health disparities exist. 

The behavioral health clinic, also known as the Medical Home at SCHC will provide support to aid District 7, the community surrounding SCHC – a region with the highest percentage of children living in the city by district, many of whom are from immigrant families where English is not their primary language. Medical Home at SCHC will: 

• Serve as a one-stop shop for coordinated, high quality, accessible behavioral and physical pediatric care, and will include a significant bilingual component to serve the many immigrant families in the hospital’s neighborhoods.
• Provide initial behavioral health service lines that will offer families gold-standard neurological and developmental assessments and other service lines developed with a trauma-informed care approach in partnership with CBH (Community Behavioral Health), and in concert with the submission and approval of a behavioral health outpatient clinic license to make equitable services available for the families and children in District 7 and the surrounding region.
• Offer support and references for families’ educational, medical, social, legal, and financial needs including collaboration with agencies such as the on- site tax services and Medical Legal Partnership.
• Produce an expanded and informed behavioral health workforce fluent in best practices and innovative, interdisciplinary care coordination. Ultimately, the SCHC medical home will integrate both inpatient and outpatient services into its model and become recognized as the region’s primary pediatric solution to known deficits in behavioral health services.