Kauffman Best Practices Project Final Report - The Chadwick Center ...

F O R E W O R D
Over the past 27 years, inspired by the leadership of Dr. David Chadwick, the
Center for Child Protection at Children’s Hospital - San Diego has made a
major commitment to the prevention, treatment, and education of child abuse
and neglect. The Center for Child Protection (renamed The Chadwick Center
for Children and Families in 2002) is now the most comprehensive multidisciplinary
program in the country connected to a children’s hospital. We have
been pleased to be active participants in the National Call To Action, a
unique social movement aiming to end child abuse in America.
Over the last 10 years, Children’s Hospital - San Diego has made a major
commitment to relentlessly improving all phases of the quality of care it
provides through rigorous use of clinical pathways developed based on
the best evidence available. Coordinated by our Center for Child Health
Outcomes, over 65 pathways have been developed covering 35% of the
children we treat with a 90% compliance rate. We have greatly benefited
from the leadership and work of Dr. Donald Berwick and the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston, and from being part of the Child
Health Accountability Initiative (CHAI) – a collaborative with other
Children’s Hospitals to improve care.
One of the lessons learned from IHI and the pioneering study “Crossing
the Quality Chasm” by the Institute of Medicine was the tremendous gap
between best care and everyday care in hospitals and office practices, and
the fundamental system changes that were needed to close this chasm. It
occurred to us that the child abuse field could benefit by learning from many
of the methodologies designed by the IHI and building them on to identified
best practices in child abuse.
We set out to engage some of the nation’s leaders in child abuse and asked
their guidance in how the best thinking of both fields could be brought
together. We are particularly grateful to Dr. Ben Saunders and to the other
advisors, many of whom are active members of the National Child Traumatic
Stress Network, mentioned in this document for their contributions. We are
also grateful to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for their support of
this work. We hope that this document will stimulate further collaboration
between the healthcare and child abuse fields, and will accelerate the improvement
of care provided so that, one day, every child in America who is the victim
of abuse will receive the best treatment provided in the most effective way.
Domonique Hensler Charles Wilson Blair L. Sadler
Executive Director Executive Director President & CEO
National Call To Action Chadwick Center Children’s Hospital-
The Sam & Rose Stein Chair San Diego
in Child Protection