Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Lab to launch at Children’s National
The hospital has been working for years on improving screenings and support for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
Physician researchers at Children’s National Hospital secured a $1.8 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that will fund a Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Patient Safety Lab. Neonatologists, pediatric emergency medicine physicians, psychologists, computer scientists and the Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder team from Children’s National will partner with systems engineers at Virginia Tech and Human Factors experts at MedStar Patient Safety Institute to set up a learning lab. The lab will improve mental health screening, referral and treatment of parents and caregivers at the hospital.
The need
“After multi-month admission to our NICU, 45% of parents screen positive for depression. I can’t think of any other disorder or disease that screens positive at 45%. This can’t be ignored,” says Lamia Soghier, M.D. M.Ed., M.B.A., neonatologist and medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Children’s National. “Our goal is to provide safe, comprehensive, point-of-care access to mental health services for caregivers of infants treated at our hospital. I can’t think of a better team on the cutting edge that’s qualified to tackle this issue.”
The big picture
The new grant will tackle three major aims:
- Optimize screening, referral and treatment for postpartum depression in the NICU and the Pediatric Emergency Department (ED).
- Design and develop a novel software dashboard for real-time tracking of the screening, referral and treatment stages for eligible mothers.
- Implement new solutions and evaluate latent safety threats related to missed screening, referral or treatment in current and future systems.
Researchers from the Center for Prenatal, Neonatal & Maternal Health Research and population health experts from the Child Health Advocacy Institute at Children’s National will also support this work.
Leading the way
“Children’s National is truly an innovator in this space,” says Dr. Soghier. “There are very few pediatric hospitals working with families to screen for mental health in the NICU, and fewer tackling the problem in the ED. Our team is dedicated to paving this path.”
The hospital has been working for years on improving screenings and support for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, which was originally made possible by an investment from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation to Children’s National aimed at providing families with greater access to mental health care and community resources. This new AHRQ grant will support the trajectory and goals of this work.
