Completed Tasks

Educational Webcasts

There were six CHAMP webcasts this grant year:

1. October 11, 2023, The Neurobiology of Trauma, presented by Anthony Zenkus, LCSW *Co-sponsored with APSAC-NY and NY Foundling.
2. November 8, 2023, What Pediatric Practitioners Need to Know to Support Parents and Patients to Prevent On-Line Sexual Victimization, presented by Janet Rosenzweig, PhD, MPA and Trevor Raushi, MS *Co-sponsored with APSAC-NY and NY Foundling.
3. December 6, 2023, Keeping Up! New Literature in Child Abuse Medicine, presented by Stephen C. Boos, MD. *Co-sponsored with APSAC-NY.
4. January 10, 2024, Striving to Promote Early Relational Health and Child Development in the Healthcare Space, presented by Blair Hammond, MD.
5. February 14, 2024, When It’s Just a Bump on the Head: Interpreting Skull Fractures, presented by James Metz, MD MPH.
6. March 13, 2024, Child and Adolescent Pregnancy Due to Sexual Abuse: Trauma-Informed Management, presented by Gillian Hopgood DO, FAAP and Kimberly Alba, PsyD.

Drs. Rosenzweig, Boos and Hammond are nationally renowned experts in child health policy, child abuse pediatrics and general pediatrics, respectively. Dr. Metz is a child abuse pediatrician from the University of Vermont. Dr. Hopgood is a current CHAMP Faculty member and child abuse pediatrician who collaborates with Dr. Alba, a bilingual and bicultural clinical psychologist at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. Mr. Zenkus, LCSW, and Mr. Raushi, MS, are social justice and anti-violence advocates within the field of child abuse medicine. All webcasts bring research-based information to the child abuse professionals of NYS and provide an opportunity for attendees to participate with an expert.

Webcast attendees identified themselves as being physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and registered nurses working in pediatrics, emergency medicine and family medicine, many with SANE/SART/SAFE designation, and social workers and non-medical members of multidisciplinary teams. There was a total of 1,527 registrants for the webcasts. Of those who registered, 376 were awarded Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits. Both the webcasts and CME credits (one credit per webcast) are free to participants.

Attendees evaluated all webcast presenters as excellent and the content as being clear and helpful. From the responses to the surveys at the end of the webcasts, attendees planned to make changes in their practice, including:

• Increased awareness of newer research and will review suggested papers
• Better communication with radiology for occult fractures based on patient history
• Consider the impact of bias on child abuse evaluations
• Take more time to validate parental concerns regarding patient behavior
• Prevention of child abuse by promoting positive attachment
• Discuss parenting strategies with parents who report difficulties with developmental stages or discipline
• I plan to spend time looking over the SPARK material so I can share it with my patients
• I will be aware of my own bias with advising patients on their options for continuing/not continuing with childhood pregnancy
• Try to be less judgmental and apply TIC principles towards the adults surrounding the child who suffers sexual abuse
• How important it is to discuss normal human sexuality with families
• Teach my residents and SANEs some of the info presented today
• When to call a consult/child protective services
• Will be more careful in how I articulate to trainees and investigators the level of concern regarding a skull fracture, and why

Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse Course

The online course Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse (ECSA) continues to be an effective educational tool for pediatricians, emergency department physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and SANEs. This grant year 98 professionals registered for the course. By June 30, 54 had passed the 100-question test. Of those who passed the test, 14 applied for and received CME credit and 3 received MOC points. Although the course is free, there is nominal charge for the 12 CME credits.

The ECSA course was originally created to be the first step for New York State medical professionals to become CHAMP Network Members. Its use has expanded to being part of child abuse training for medical residents and fellows and self-preparation for certification examinations. Twenty-three trainees from St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center and SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, including family medicine residents, pediatric residents and pediatric emergency medicine fellows completed ECSA as a part of their rotation in child abuse with the Child Abuse Referral and Evaluation (CARE) clinic this year.

From the launch of the course in September 2011 through June 2024, there have been 2,109 registrants. Of those, 1,038 have passed the test and 370 have applied for and received CME credit.

Other CHAMP Website Resources

The statistics for this annual report reflect visitors between December 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024. The July 1 through November 30, 2023, statistics were unexpectedly lost when the updated CHAMP website was transferred to a new server. CHAMPprogram.com drew over 129,000 visitors. In addition to viewing web pages, visitors made nearly 49,000 downloads. That total includes over 3,800 Practice Recommendations related to Triage, Skeletal Survey, Photographic Documentation and Writing an Impact Statement; and over 2,500 Guidelines related to Evaluation of Physical Abuse, Evaluation of Sexual Abuse, Trauma-Informed Care and Promoting Unbiased and Inclusive Care. Test Your Knowledge statistics are now tabulated as the case question and answer being a single unit. The 24 questions had over 6,000 visitors. The nine child trafficking cases had nearly 2,300 visitors.

The ChildAbuseMD.com website that posts the searchable webbook Child Abuse Evaluation & Treatment for Medical Providers had over 44,500 visitors.

Since ChildAbuseMD.com was launched in mid-2005 and CHAMPprogram.com was launched in mid-2007, there have been over six million visitors to the websites.

CHAMP Faculty, Associate Faculty and Network Members

CHAMP Faculty and Associate Faculty provide educational experiences for medical students, residents, fellows and medical professionals. CHAMP Faculty are Child Abuse Pediatricians. Associate Faculty are physicians, advanced practice nurses or physician assistants who have training and experience in providing child abuse evaluations and work with CHAMP Faculty as part of a child abuse team.

This year CHAMP added two Associate Faculty. My Luu, FNP-BC, joined the J.E. and Z.B. Butler Center for Children and Families and The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, to work with CHAMP Faculty Mandy O’Hara, MD. Jackie Collard, RN, BSN, MS, C-PNP, joined the Niagara County Child Advocacy Center, Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, working with CHAMP faculty Iram Ashraf, MD.

To remain on the Active Network Member roster, members must attend at least three CHAMP educational webcasts annually. There were 21 Active Network Members at the start of the year, July 1, 2023. Of those, one retired, one left practice, and Jackie Collard became Associate Faculty. Therefore, 18 Active Network Members remain as of June 30, 2024.

There are 19 New York counties that have one or more CHAMP Network Members. These counties are Albany, Broome, Cayuga, Dutchess, Fulton, Jefferson, Madison, Orange, Otsego, Putnam, Rockland, Saratoga, St. Lawrence, Schenectady, Schuyler, Sullivan, Warren, Washington and Westchester.

Other Educational Opportunities and Scholarly Activity

CHAMP education is an integral part of SUNY Upstate Medical University and the Maimonides Medical Center Child Abuse Pediatrics Fellowship programs. The educational webcasts, ECSA online course and weekly case conferences are part of the fellowship curriculum.

The CARE Program at Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, provided scheduled learning experiences and rotations for 26 Pediatric and Family Medicine residents, one Pediatric Hospitalist Medicine fellow, two Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellows and three Child & Adolescent Psychiatry fellows. In addition, nine CHAMP Faculty and their Associate Faculty provided educational experiences for residents at their sites.

Recommendation

Collaborative Education

Collaborations greatly add to the success of CHAMP’s webcasts. For the seventh year, CHAMP collaborated with the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children-New York (APSAC-NY) to present three webcasts. For two of the webcasts, this year’s collaboration also included the NY Foundling, which sponsored and awarded 57 CEU credits to social workers or psychologists. This collaboration contributes to meeting the increasing CME costs and expands the availability of speakers and the number of attendees.

Collaborations also enhance CHAMP’s ability to address the educational needs of NYS pediatric medical providers and Child Abuse Centers (CACs). In March 2023, the NYS Office of Children and Family Services awarded CHAMP significant funding to expand its educational services. As a result, CHAMP was able to design and build a more stable database that can easily be expanded to support future educational features and update CHAMPprogram.com, which was launched on November 30, 2023. In addition, an updated and expanded ChildAbuseMD will be launched in the late fall of 2024. The grant is also helping CHAMP create educational and professional materials to support NYS CACs. In the summer of 2023, CHAMP developed and analyzed a statewide CAC inventory questionnaire and in September held a NYS child abuse pediatrics medical summit.