Healthy Homes, Healthy Futures: A Home Visitation Curriculum for Pediatric Residents

Authors

Kofi D. Essel, George Washington University
Sirisha Yalamanchi, Children's National Health System
Cara Lichtenstein, George Washington UniversityFollow
Erin Hysom, Maryland State Department of Education

Document Type

Instructional Material

Publication Date

10-2-2016

Description

A working knowledge of the home and neighborhood environment is critical to understanding the barriers that families face when struggling with obesity. Most doctors are only given the opportunity to address individuals with obesity in the office setting and usually describe their counseling abilities as ineffective. This focused home visitation curriculum offers a unique tool to improve residents’ understanding of the social determinants of health, how these determinants relate to obesity, and critical obesity-management skills. The curriculum requires residents to review three PowerPoint modules and an article on motivational interviewing. Residents then implement what they have learned by doing two home visits with a family from their continuity clinic and completing a windshield survey of the family’s neighborhood. This publication includes all of the materials necessary to facilitate the curriculum, including scripts for the residents to use at each visit, resources for the family, and curriculum evaluation tools. The program has been integrated into our pediatric residency curriculum and completed by 20 interns during a first-year community health rotation, but it could be completed at any time during resident training. Residents who completed the curriculum reported improved counseling skills and improved understanding of the social determinants of health. During postcurriculum qualitative interviews, residents described the experience as eye-opening and revealed that lessons learned from the visits will alter how they approach patients who are obese in their future clinical practice.

AAMC MedEdPORTAL publication ID 10480. Link to original

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

DOI

10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10480

Recommended Citation

Essel KD, Yalamanchi S, Hysom E, Lichtenstein C. Healthy homes, healthy futures: a home visitation curriculum for pediatric residents. MedEdPORTAL Publications. 2016;12:10480. http://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10480