The 6th Annual Forum for Improving Children's Health Care will be held March 19-21, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in San Francisco, CA. This exciting event will also include a pre-meeting and complete track of sessions focused on patient safety; 'Purging Harm from Children's Health Care'. The general objectives for the Forum include: 1) Build will for improvement by highlighting successful evidence-based models and interventions and create a community of dedicated professionals who are working to transform healthcare for children 2) Disseminate strategies for implementing valid findings of health services research and other tools. When evidence-based strategies are not yet available, best practices from the field based on theoretically sound conceptual frameworks for change are presented as promising approaches for further field tests 3) Inspire collaboration and information sharing among provider organizations and across the multiple stakeholder levels affecting children's health care across the world- patient and family, communities, health care organizations, and the broad political and cultural environment 4) Mobilize efforts to provide better health care for children within the areas of NICHQ's agenda for improving children's health care: Preventing Childhood Obesity, Providing Seamless, Evidence-based, Family Centered Care for Children with Chronic Conditions, Purging Harm from Children's Healthcare, Promoting Equity in Care, Profound Knowledge: Methods and Tools for Improvement In order to achieve the objectives noted above, NICHQ has identified several key target audiences, and has been successful in attracting these audiences to attend. Key attributes of the participants attending include; achievement of some level of management, leadership, or innovation role in an organization and participation in children's health care from one of a variety of potential organizational and disciplinary perspectives. The 6th Annual Forum for Improving Children's Health Care will have many similar aspects as past years; however, this conference will have two major changes. The first is that NICHQ will focus all of our session offerings on five specific tracks that we believe can make the greatest impact in improving children's health care. These five tracks of which four are part of the bold agenda for improving children's health care set forth by Charles Homer, MD, MPH, NICHQ's Chief Executive Officer and an expert in Pediatric Quality Improvement, during his plenary speech at the 5th Annual Forum. The Forum tracks include: Preventing Childhood Obesity, Providing Seamless, Evidence-based, Family Centered Care for Children with Chronic Conditions, Purging Harm from Children's Health Care, Promoting Equity in Care, Profound Knowledge: Methods and Tools for Improvement (including Leadership, IT, and Improvement Methods) In addition, in an effort to align with other organizations dedicated to quality care for children, the 6th Annual Forum will highlight a unique partnership effort between NICHQ and the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI). In 2007, we will co-locate the NICHQ Forum and NACHRI Spring Meeting in San Francisco to allow attendees to become more involved in both meetings and build on each organizations effort around improving the quality of care for children. In particular NICHQ and NACHRI will host a full day patient safety meeting on Sunday, March 18, 2007 which will connect the two larger conferences. The full day patient safety meeting will kick-off the 'Purging Harm from Children's Health Care' track of the 6th Annual Forum. Content will include nationally recognized speakers discussing a variety of topics including a special focus on the interventions of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100K Lives Campaign relevant for children's healthcare. NICHQ and NACHRI will work closely to develop this meeting with national leaders and have invited other organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, The Child Healthcare Corporation of American and leaders from mentor hospitals across the country involved in the Pediatric Node of the Campaign to work with us on this shared vision and joint meeting. In five years, NICHQ's Annual Forum has become the central conference for leaders around the country committed to making improvements in children's health care. This event provides a setting in which health care leaders from a variety of disciplines and organizational settings can learn the latest findings in health services research relevant to improving children's health care. Moreover this conference provides an opportunity for these multiple stakeholders to make connections with each other and gain pragmatic skills that will help them translate research into practice. NICHQ bases its activities around a simple framework for promoting change developed by Paul Batalden. (Batalden, 1996); this framework posits three essential pre-requisites for change and improvement: Will Ideas Execution The Annual Forum for Improving Children's Health Care is intended to play a critical role in initiating and accelerating improvement in the quality of children's health care, and is designed specifically around this simple model for promoting improvement in care. The 'Purging Harm from Children's Health Care' track and related activities of the 6th Annual Forum will build will for improvement, disseminate strategies for implementing valid findings, inspire collaboration and information sharing and mobilize efforts to provide better health care for children through patient safety focused sessions and a full day meeting. ? ? ?
