Introducing the Office of Community Health

Q&A with Joanna Perdomo, MD, MPH, Medical Director of the Office of Community Health, and Julie Katz, MBA, Executive Director of Community Health and Corporate Responsibility

Why was the Nicklaus Children’s Office of Community Health launched? What is its purpose?

Julie Katz: The Office of Community Health was created to lead internal and external collaborations to advance children’s health and serve as an incubator for new community health programs and initiatives. Ultimately, it is the goal of the Office of Community Health at Nicklaus Children’s to connect our community to the resources we offer as a hospital and health system, and also other resources that may benefit patients, their families, and the community at large. Elevating the overall health of our community is an incredibly complex and challenging task, and we are working hard to create the infrastructure and programs to make that happen.

Why was there a need to launch an Office of Community Health at Nicklaus Children’s?

Joanna Perdomo: I want to start by making it clear that we, as a health system, were doing a lot of this work already, even before the Office of Community Health was launched. We’ve been doing this work for decades, since Nicklaus Children’s was established. An important reason to create the Office of Community Health was formalizing a lot of the efforts under one umbrella that had already been happening. In doing so, we collaborate with many others within our organization, including safety and injury prevention, our school health team, and talking to other departments and divisions that manage certain disease states to support how their work in the community and social drivers of health impact their patients. We are now serving as the central hub for community health-focused initiatives.

Why is it so important to have such an Office in South Florida?

Julie: South Florida is truly unique – with unique challenges, resources, and populations. Our cultural diversity is reflected in the patients and staff of Nicklaus Children’s. Another aspect reflected in our patients is a high level of need. 70 percent of our patients are enrolled in Medicaid. Addressing these socioeconomic needs and reducing health disparities drive the work of the Office of Community Health and affect so many of the children we see. Both Joanna and I grew up in Miami and it is rewarding to be able to dedicate ourselves and the resources of the organization to promoting health and wellbeing in this community.?

Joanna: A lot of the challenges we see in other places, a lot of the community health issues, are issues that we see in Florida and Miami as well. There are parallels and differences. For one, we are a minority-majority community and more than half of our families speak Spanish. That can be a barrier for health literacy. Another issue here in Miami is that we are uniquely positioned as a place that is vulnerable to climate effects. This is something that is part of our work as well. Overall, we serve such a large area – the quad-county area – and our footprint spans so much of this region. We are able to reach a lot of the people with the programs we create and have a big impact.?

What is a concrete example of how you are making a difference in the community??

Julie: One of our key projects has been the social drivers of health screening and referral initiative that Joanna has already written about . Social drivers of health are the non-medical factors that impact health outcomes. As part of this initiative, we are screening and providing resources for food and nutrition insecurity, transportation barriers, housing situation and conditions, utilities and other resource needs. Nearly 40% of our families experience resource challenges that impact their health. If we ignore the fact that families don’t have basic resources like food, then we’re undermining the clinical care we provide.?

Joanna: We have now screened more than 48,000 patients for social drivers of health, a steep increase from April, when I wrote about the program on my LinkedIn blog.?

Are there any other programs or initiatives you can elaborate on??

Julie: Something that we are really proud of is the engagement of our employees in the community through ONE Nicklaus Children’s, a key initiative to embed community involvement, philanthropy, and advocacy into our organizational culture. Community Connect events provide employees the chance to use paid time – up to 8 hours a year – to engage with mission-aligned organizations and, in 2023 alone, 632 employees participated with 36 community organizations, spending over 3,700 hours in the community. Organizations such as Feeding South Florida, Health in the Hood, and Whispering Manes offer recurring Community Connect events, and employees love their involvement in these causes that also support our patients and families.?

Joanna: Another important collaboration which has really made an impact is providing nutrition education in the community as part of our Food for Salud efforts. Over the past year we’ve provided nutrition education both at the hospital, through monthly patient experience events, and externally by working with the YMCA on after-school programs at local elementary schools, providing nutrition education to elementary students. We also collaborated with other divisions at the hospital to raise awareness around certain diseases and the nutritional needs of those families as well. Working with our executive chef and clinical dietitians, we have created recipes that are budget friendly, healthy, and kid friendly. There’s now a series of YouTube videos of cooking demos, in which our hospital chef is creating these recipes with kids, so that they are easily and broadly accessible to families. We also have monthly blog posts about nutrition and food on our Food for Salud web page . In addition, we plan on launching a garden and bringing a mobile market to provide nutritional food in the near future.?

Julie: Lastly, the Victor Center for the Prevention of Jewish Genetic Diseases is now also a part of the Office of Community Health. The Victor Center offers community outreach, education, and preconception screenings for genetic diseases and conditions to anyone in the community.?

Is research also an area of interest for the Office of Community Health??

Joanna: Yes, it definitely is. There is research, program evaluation, and also general reporting that looks at our programs and their outcomes and data that we are seeing. This is important because it allows us to analyze the impact we are making and identify areas of greatest need. Some of the research that we have already presented is around our work to address social drivers of health and we are currently working on research and reporting on our Food for Salud nutrition education sessions. The work we’re doing is very collaborative, and colleagues in different departments are quite interested in the social driver of health data we’re gathering, how it impacts their patients, and how they can use it to intervene more specifically.?

What is the long-term vision for the Office??

Julie: We have so many big ideas and are really excited to see how this work continues to grow. Within two to five years, we envision Nicklaus Children’s having a community health resource center which will include community resource navigators who can help families connect with community resources and also leverage collaborations with community organizations that can provide financial and legal support, to name just a few. This will also be a location to provide tangible resources on site, such as groceries, diapers, safety items, and more. Additionally, it’s important to offer resources in the community, not just on site at Nicklaus Children’s. We need to embed services directly in our areas of highest need in order to provide nutritious foods, health education, resources for kids with specific dietary needs, and more.?

Joanna: We are also developing a community advocacy rotation for our medical residents. It will be a two-week rotation that some residents will pilot next year. In the 2025/26 academic year, it will become a required rotation for all residents. They are going to go out into the community to get a better understanding of where patients live, work, play, and get healthcare services. They will spend time with social workers, learn about injury prevention and safety, and engage directly with community agencies. One of the goals is for the residents to learn about advocacy as pediatricians. It’s a really exciting opportunity for our residents to be actively engaging in community health. Pediatrics as a medical field is inherently tied to advocacy. That needs to be reflected in how we train the pediatricians of the future.