Pediatric Access to Care Navigator 2024-25

UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh's Division of Community Health (Children's Community Health) envisions all children growing into healthy and thriving adults. With this in mind, our mission is to improve health outcomes, reduce health disparities, and elevate quality of life for children and families in the communities where they live, learn, work, and play. In order to best serve children, families, and communities, we affirm our stance on advancing equitable, and culturally and socially relevant care to all. Our work is focused in communities that have been historically marginalized and under resourced, and we work with community members and organizations to learn from them and work together to address barriers to care, education, and other resources. The member will be an integral part of the Community Health team serving to address barriers and will be provided the opportunity to participate in community discussions and professional development opportunities to further their understanding of systemic oppression.

This member position will be supporting our Clinical-Community Connections program area, which strives to improve access to care and resources through the development of community partnerships with organizations that can support our families’ health-related social needs. The Clinical-Community Connections team works to ensure clinical partners are aware of resources available to their patient families and provides training and resource so that clinical teams can conduct screenings and referrals to the appropriate supports in areas such as food insecurity and transportation. This position will be specific to improving access to transportation for pediatric primary care visits.

The member will be receiving comprehensive resource navigation training, with a specific focus on transportation and access to care, to support the needs of identified patient families. Upon completion of training, the member will be tasked with assessing identified patient families for resource needs, with a focus on transportation, in an effort to improve their access to pediatric primary care and connection to resources to support other health-related social needs. The member will directly connect patient families to transportation services (i.e. Medical Assistance Transportation Program and UPMC Children's Lyft Program) for their upcoming primary care appointments. Member will conduct follow-up outreach and glean qualitative feedback from families to better understand how and whether service connections were able to meet their stated needs.

The member will serve as liaison between transportation and pediatric primary care providers, learning about and improving linkages between these clinical and community settings, with the ultimate goal of improve pathways to care. The member will assist with disseminating new resources and education to the primary care network.

Outreach & Coordination
- Provide patient family outreach across the network, assessing for transportation barriers and connecting to transportation services as needed.
- Provide personalized support to each patient family to ensure understanding.
- Provide follow-up phone calls to glean feedback.
- Provide technical assistance to families.

Asset Mapping & Resource Curation
- Curate resources for use by clinical staff and patient families that can help with connection to transportation services.
- Collaborate with staff and community partners to understand how Children's can better connect patients with resources in their communities.
- Update community resource databases to share with clinical networks.
- Organize and maintain suite of available transportation services.

Addressing Structural Oppression
- Glean feedback from patient families, PCP practices, and transportation providers.
- Understand system-level issues with accessing healthcare from various communities where patient families live.
- Collaborating with team members to incorporate learnings into programmatic changes for overall improvement in access to care.

Multi-tasker, Detail-oriented, Able to build strong relationships, Able to communicate effectively with individuals or diverse backgrounds and identities, Compassionate

Knowledge of AmeriCorps/Health Corps member requirements. Skill with Microsoft Office or other software for a variety of data processing operations involving a range of problem solving, record keeping, correspondence, and service tracking options.

Member uses initiative in carrying out recurring assignments following set procedures, independently. The supervisor assigns service activities, advises on changes in procedures, and is available for assistance when required. The supervisor assigns service activities in terms of project objectives and basic priorities and is available for consultation in resolving controversial issues.

The member independently plans and carries out the projects and selects the approaches and methods to be used in solving problems. Completed projects are reviewed very generally to determine that objectives have been met and are in compliance with policies and regulations.

Written and oral guides provide specific instructions for doing service. Detailed guidelines exist, including regulations and directives, handbooks, precedents, industry standards, and files of previous projects. Member must use considerable judgment in adapting current or developing new guidance. 

The member must develop new techniques, methods, or approaches to complete service position assignments. In making decisions, the member is often required to depart from past approaches and to extend traditional techniques. 

Health screening or service required. UPMC requires annual flu vaccination which extends to the NHC member. They can receive this at the hospital during a vaccine clinic.

Is proficiency in a language other than English required? No.

In addition to NHC Standard Checks, all NHC Pittsburgh members are required to complete and pass criminal history checks for Great Lakes Behavioral Research Institute/Diversified Care Management (DCM). Great Lakes/DCM is a third party vendor contracted with the Allegheny County Health Department (operating site for NHC Pittsburgh) to distribute NHC Pittsburgh member stipends. NHC Pittsburgh members are onboarded to Great Lakes/DCM system only when the checks have been completed and the member has passed those checks.  Along with these checks, some Host Sites require their NHC Pittsburgh Members to be Vaccinated against COVID-19. 

The checks that all NHC Pittsburgh members would be required to complete and pass for Great Lakes/DCM are the following: 1) Act 33 (Pennsylvania Child Abuse Clearance), 2) National Sex Offender Registry Clearance,  3) Act 34 (Pennsylvania Criminal History Clearance, and 4) Act 73 (FBI Criminal History Clearance - ONLY completed via Identogo PA).

NHC members do not have to pay for the completion of these checks. Great Lakes/DCM will distribute payment codes for the Act 33 (Pennsylvania Child Abuse Clearance) and Act 73 (FBI Criminal History Clearance which is conducted through Identogo PA ( PA FBI fingerprinting agency). The National Sex Offender Registry Clearance and Act 34 (Pennsylvania Criminal History Clearance) will be completed by Great Lakes/DCM upon receiving requested information that members will be asked to submit.