On this monthly radio program, The Children’s Foundation President and CEO Larry Burns talks to community, government and business leaders about issues related to children’s health and wellness.
Guests for this discussion were Kathy Donovan, CEO, Children’s Hospital of Michigan; Greg McLaughlin, CEO, PGA Tour First Tee Foundation and CEO, World Golf Foundation; and Dr. George Kikano, Dean, College of Medicine and Vice President for Health Affairs, Central Michigan University.
The hour-long show typically airs at 7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month on WJR 760AM. Here’s a summary of the show that aired August 25, 2020; listen to the entire episode, and archived episodes, at yourchildrensfoundation.org/caring-for-kids.
Larry Burns: You have over 30 years of experience working in leading children’s hospitals across the country. What attracted you to Detroit?
Kathy Donovan: I’m extremely passionate about the impact that healthcare can make on a community and how important it is for the survival of the community. I was drawn to Children’s Hospital of Michigan and the Detroit area because of the opportunity to truly make an impact on the care received by kids in this town and throughout the state. Encompassing the entire community, focusing on what needs to be done: getting kids to primary care visits, nutrition and exercise programs, health education and addressing behavioral health needs.
Burns: What are the differences between an adult hospital and a freestanding pediatric hospital?
Donovan: Children are extremely unique and require very specialized care. They’re not just little adults, which is a common misperception. Each child that we treat could be a one-in-a-million case. They require a large, multidisciplinary team to work with them. For example, one patient may need 12 different subspecialists. In Michigan, we have all those subspecialists at our fingertips—we do not take that for granted. These are physicians who could work anywhere and they choose to be here. It takes a very special healthcare worker because it’s not easy to watch kids go through difficult situations. We need to protect them and advocate for them.
Burns: What are your short-term objectives?
Donovan: We all know the impact that COVID-19 has had on our entire country. The healthcare industry was hit particularly hard. We’re trying to figure out how we emerge from this and get back to business while keeping everyone safe in this new environment. The other piece of this is supporting our staff who have gone through something that you would never expect in your entire lifetime. It’s a different type of post-traumatic stress.
Burns: Tell us about your goals for the hospital.
Donovan: We do some incredible innovative research here in Michigan. How do we elevate that to a national level and gain the attention that Michigan deserves on that stage? The other thing I want to emphasize is the mental health focus initiative that The Children’s Foundation is going to join us in. We’re putting together a collaboration of organizations within the state to create a facility that would take kids and families.
Burns: Have you seen any increase in behavioral health issues with COVID-19?
Donovan: Children are experiencing things that they’ve never experienced in their lives. They’re isolated and don’t have a normal routine. This is contributing to some of their behavioral health issues. Our volume has increased dramatically in our emergency department for kids and parents. Where do these kids go to receive the longer-term treatment that they desperately need? That’s what we’re going to work on together.
Larry Burns: Tell us about the First Tee Foundation.
Greg McLaughlin: The First Tee’s goal is to use golf as a platform to introduce kids to the game and also teach them life skills and provide character education-related programs.It’s a great organization that has been around for close to 25 years that has reached 15 million kids in all 50 states and there are some 20,000 people who are connected to it, either staff or volunteers.
Burns: Give us some examples of the life skills First Tee teaches.
McLaughlin: All of our programs are delivered by trained instructors and every one of them has gone through varying levels of training in order to deliver the programs. We describe it as a youth development character education program. Our age of focus is the 10- to 14-year-olds with the goal of getting kids ready for high school. That’s a time of significant transformation in an individual’s life. Our goal is helping develop these young people’s values.
We also have a school program where kids are introduced to First Tee through a physical education class. We reach nearly 3 million kids annually through that program. Then we connect the kids from the school program to local chapters. Our next push is with technology. We feel like that’s a long-term opportunity for us to be able to reach more kids.
Burns: What brought about your affiliation with The Children’s Foundation?
McLaughlin: The outreach that The Children’s Foundation has in reaching out to young people has been extraordinary. The reputation that you have in the community in and around philanthropy was exactly what we were looking for in a partner. We think Detroit has a tremendous appeal and opportunity. The Children’s Foundation can extend that reach. Currently the First Tee on a national basis is about 39 percent gender diverse and about 52 percent non-Caucasian. It’s a big focus for us to provide our programs in underserved and underrepresented communities.
Burns: Tell us about the launch of the new brand for First Tee.
McLaughlin: Most people will say we’re a junior golf program. But if you ask people who are connected with the program, they say it’s really a youth development program. It began with a logo review; it’s the original logo from 23 years ago. We started going down that path, and it became more of a question of what is our brand identity and what do we want to be known for? What do our constituents believe are the most redeeming qualities within our organization and how do we communicate that? That was the process. We wanted to find something that was a little more kid-friendly, something that kids want to wear. A brand company out of New York did the leg work for us. This process lasted about a year and they interviewed a bunch of kids from the New York and New Jersey areas who helped them create something that they wanted to see.
Give an overview of the college of medicine at Central Michigan University.
Dr. George Kikano: Our country’s been facing a major shortage of physicians and there are major shortages happening in urban and rural underserved areas. Conservatively we’re looking at over 50,000 physicians needed in this country in the next 10 years. It takes over 10 years to produce a physician, so solving the problem that we’re going to have in 2030 starts now. Based on that need, the leadership of CMU decided to open a medical school over 10 years ago. Our mission is to provide the future workforce of physicians to care for underserved populations. Our footprint has been in Michigan. We are a school for Michigan, from Michigan. By choice, not by need, 80 percent of our students have been selected from Michigan. We are hoping, based on the data, that they’ll stay in Michigan to take care of urban and rural areas. We have only 100 positions for over 7,500 applicants and we select students from Michigan because there’s a higher likelihood that they’ll stay here.
Burns: How are the graduates doing and where are they going?
Kikano: We have graduated four classes and the match records for residency have been almost perfect, which is amazing for a startup. Over 50 percent of our classes have stayed in Michigan and the other ones are being recruited nationally to the top programs in the country. Approximately 75 percent selected the primary care specialty. In our current fourth year students, 16 of 100 will be going into psychiatry.
Burns: Tell us about the mental health residency program.
Kikano: There is still a new patient bottleneck in our region. To get an appointment with a mental health provider takes over six months and that’s unacceptable. Five years ago we started the residency program in psychiatry. It is the only one in our area. The other piece that’s been great for us has been all the relationships we’ve created with local mental health agencies—grassroots organizations that address suicide prevention, suicide education, mental health stigma and geriatric health.
Burns: You have a growing relationship with the Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
Kikano: There is a bottleneck for student teaching around pediatric issues, whether it’s primary care, subspecialty or mental health. It’s a problem for all medical schools in the country. To partner with the hospital and its pediatrician group to provide opportunities to educate our students on pediatric issues was something we could not pass up. It’s been a great partnership.
Burns: The college of medicine is still relatively new. What is your vision?
Kikano: The next piece for us over the next three to five years is to develop and invest in research. That’s meaningful to take care of the mental, physical and economic health of the community. We are hoping to expand class size, develop more interprofessional teaching and have more partners in Michigan and beyond.
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Caring for kids: Advocating for the mental and physical care of children - Crain's Detroit Business
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