A Black pre-schooled aged boy is examined by a practitioner.

Strengthening Community Through Access to Care

Community leaders in Washington, D.C., founded Children’s National in 1870 to improve the health and well-being of every child.

Campaign support helped us build on our legacy of providing exceptional pediatric care for our community. We opened new regional locations and expanded mobile health to bring this care to more families who need us — in their neighborhoods across Washington, D.C., and in Maryland and Virginia.

Expanded primary and specialty care, including for asthma and mental and behavioral health, and services and resources that address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, are helping more kids in our community grow up stronger.

Two Black children, a girl and a boy, pose for a portrait with arms around each other on the front lawn of their home.

Jehoram's Story

Helena’s son Jehoram was born with sickle cell disease. For years, her family barely left home. Care at Children’s National Hospital helped Jehoram, and his whole family, get better and get back to their lives.

Bring Care Beyond the Hospital

A Black male high school student sits next to a Black female adult.

Expand K-12 Programming and Nurse Training

We will create opportunities within schools to enhance collaboration and increase access to mental and behavioral health care. We must train advocates who see kids every day and serve as “first responders.” Telemedicine will deliver services to more students. We’ll expand our training of nurses — who serve nearly 200 DC public and charter schools — to provide mental health screenings and referrals.

A pre-school aged female child uses markers to color. An adult female sits with her at the table.

Coordinate with Early Childhood Centers

We will empower early childhood professionals to test and adapt strategies that improve children’s mental health and well-being. We’ll launch a targeted preschool initiative, Unstuck and On Target. It will help kids develop critical executive function skills to succeed in school and life.

Two practitioners, one male, one female, confer at a computer screen.

Establish the Mental Health Policy Lab

We will create this new think tank within the Child Health Advocacy Institute. It will elevate our work to tackle complex issues related to mental health care and create systemic, sustainable, evidence-based policies and change.

Emergencies see no color, no income, no sort of boundaries. If a child has an accident, we are the number one stop in Washington, D.C. There is no other large pediatric emergency department such as ours. So we tend to capture the essence of our community broadly across income brackets, races, languages and beyond.

Joelle Simpson, M.D.

Division Chief, Emergency Medicine; Medical Director, Emergency Preparedness