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Dear EMSC community,
In honor of the holiday season and in lieu of EMSC’s traditional newsletter, our staff at the Health Resources and Services Administration, the EMSC Data Center, and EMSC Innovation & Improvement Center wanted to pause to reflect on the past year and express our gratitude for your tireless efforts to advance emergency care for children. This has been a challenging year in public health, especially for those working in the emergency field. With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and recent approval of vaccines for children, we appreciate all that you are doing as a healthcare workforce to eradicate COVID.
Despite the added pressures and obstacles, the pediatric emergency community rallied to make tremendous strides in improving care in 2021. A quick highlight of some of EMSC’s work this year includes:
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Providing $655,297 in supplemental funding to support pediatric readiness in rural communities,
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Achieving a 71% response rate for emergency departments participating in the National Pediatric Readiness Project assessment,
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Finalizing two pivotal resources in the National Prehospital Pediatric Readiness Project: an EMS agency checklist and toolkit,
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Announcing the incorporation of the National Pediatric Readiness Project into the American College of Surgeons’ (ACS) trauma center verification process,
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Supporting the participation of 6,910 EMS agencies in the EMS for Children Survey and the release of a corresponding national report to all EMS agencies nationwide,
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More than 40 published papers featuring or citing the work of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network,
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Registering more than 1,500 individuals in the Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinator Workforce Development Collaborative,
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Uniting across organizations to highlight pediatric readiness during EMS Week, with two webinars hosted by the American College of Emergency Physicians in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, Emergency Nurses Association, National Association of State EMS Officials, and ACS Committee on Trauma,
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Hosting the 2021 All-Grantee Meeting, which highlighted 60 speakers from across the EMSC and pediatric emergency care space and 20 poster presentations, and
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Launching the Pediatric Pandemic Network, which brings together five hub children’s hospitals and several national organizations to improve pediatric everyday readiness and disaster preparedness.
And so much more.
Many of these efforts required collaboration across EMSC, and EMSC program principal investigators, researchers, and State Partnership program directors and managers were a driving force across numerous initiatives. We also worked side-by-side with more than a dozen national organizations and federal agencies.
But perhaps most important, we were honored to work closely with you—the physicians, nurses, EMS practitioners, healthcare professionals, and advocates working on the ground—who bring to life these advances in research, practice, and policy while caring for children in real-time.
Thank you for your efforts and passion. Here’s to the new year and new understandings, new innovations, and new collaborations on behalf of children everywhere.
Sincerely,
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