Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0025362 (mental retardation)
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Guam has a Children with Special Health Needs (CSHN) Systems Management Project to coordinate different programs and services and to identify and enroll 4 year old children with special health care needs. It also streamlines service linkages and ongoing tracking activities. Children with special health needs include those with actual or potential disabilities and handicaps, actual or potential chronic diseases, actual or potential conditions that do not always cause disability or handicap, and health related educational and behavioral problems. Poverty plays a contributing role to some of these children's special needs. In fact, 25% of Guam's families are at or below the poverty level. Other children have special health care needs due to parental or psychological factors. Further inadequate prenatal care, parental mental retardation, AIDS, parental substance abuse, maternal age, and the inability to parent can all result in special need circumstances. Despite the many and varied needs, services and resources that can best help them are scarce in Guam. Even with optimal use of Guam's resources, many families of such children either do not receive proper care or leave the island to receive the proper care at a sizable cost. Moreover some children are not eligible for public assistance like the Medically Indigent Program, the Catastrophic Illness Program, and Medicaid or for local health insurance plans. The CSHN Systems Management Project uses a collaborative approach involving family, community, and professionals from a variety of disciplines. Parents voice several issues which revolve around health insurance, public assistance, case management, scarcity of professional resources, child care services, information and education, and early identification. The Project hopes to hold a training conference for parents and professionals in January 1992.
MCH News PAC 1991 Dec
PMID:New care coordination project targets special needs children under age 4. 1228 32