Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta CEO Donna Hyland was joined by Mercer School of Medicine Dean Dr. Jean Sumner, former state governor Nathan Deal, and current state leaders in announcing a new partnership aimed at bolstering rural pediatric rural care. (Photo courtesy Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta)
ATLANTA – Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has created a $200 million fund and formed a partnership with Mercer University School of Medicine to bolster rural healthcare for the youngest Georgians.
The new partnership will fund 10 full scholarships for medical students who study at Mercer and agree to practice pediatric medicine in rural Georgia for four years after completing their training.
The new fund will also support a number of pilot projects to improve pediatric care outside of metro Atlanta. One is aimed at ensuring that eight rural emergency rooms are “kid ready.”
The hospitals that will participate are: Clinch Memorial Hospital, Coffee Regional Medical Center, Crisp Regional Hospital, Dodge County Hospital, Mountain Lakes Medical Center in Rabun County, Taylor Regional Hospital in Pulaski County, Upson Regional Medical Center and Washington County Regional Medical Center.
The new project will also help five rural pediatricians with peer support and additional training: Dr. Grace Davis in Worth County, Dr. Leah Helton in Laurens County, Dr. Brittany Lord in Dodge County, Dr. Jennifer Stroud in Coffee County and Dr. Jennifer Tarbutton in Washington County.
The new partnership will work to develop a “comprehensive approach” to mental health services, including virtual mental health services and suicide prevention programs, in Washington and Jefferson counties.
Children’s will also increase funding for the Atlanta-area Ronald McDonald House charities. These charities provide support – including housing – for families that must travel to Atlanta to get care for their children.
Children’s serves pediatric patients from every Georgia county, with the system providing care to more than 32,000 patients from rural counties last year, CEO Donna Hyland said.
“The purpose of this effort is to expand access to quality care in rural communities and provide rural children with the right care at the right time in the right place,” said Dr. Jean Sumner, dean of the Mercer University School of Medicine, which is the home of the Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center.
“We hope that rural pediatricians will be empowered to serve patients … and families will be able to stay closer to home, when possible, for convenient care and follow-up.”
Sumner and Hyland were joined by Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt.-Gov. Burt Jones, state House speaker Jon Burns and former governor Nathan Deal during a Wednesday press conference announcing the partnership at the state Capitol.
State lawmakers and others have, in the past, criticized non-profit hospital systems for allegedly inadequate spending on charity care. Such criticism resulted in the passage of a 2019 GOP-sponsored bill requiring nonprofit hospitals to post financial data on their webpages.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Photo credit: Scott Housley/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Thursday considered whether children in temporary custody can receive routine immunizations over their parents’ objections, though recent changes to state policy may make the case moot.
The state Department of Human Services (DHS), which oversees child welfare and foster care, sent a June 1 memo directing employees not to seek immunizations for children in temporary custody if their parents hold sincere religious objections.
In 2021, the state removed three children from their parents’ custody because of severe physical abuse by the father.
The removal was temporary, with a plan in place to eventually reunify the family after the parents met certain requirements.
The biological parents objected to their children receiving their routine childhood vaccines. They asked the Forsyth County juvenile court to stop the state from having the children immunized, claiming religious and philosophical objections.
The juvenile court denied that request, leading to the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Typically, parents whose children are in custody have the right to visit their children and the right to object or consent to an adoption.
This case considered whether parents’ rights extend further such that they could direct medical or religious aspects of their children’s lives even after the children have been removed from custody.
“If the state is doing certain things to protect the best interests of the child that… to others may have a really important religious overlay [such as immunization]: that collision is why we’re here,” said Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren.
While the removal from custody was only temporary, immunizations are irreversible, the lawyer for the parents, David Hume, contended.
“Parents expect…their rights to be fully restored at end of temporary custody…and that includes the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children and the right to object to vaccinating their children,” Hume said.
“If the children are vaccinated…over the religious objections of the parents, then that right will be lost forever,” Hume added.
But once children have been removed from their parents’ custody, parents retain very limited rights to decide what is in the children’s best interests, argued Stephen Petrany, the Georgia solicitor general, on behalf of the Department of Human Services, which oversees foster care.
“The parents have been deemed unfit because their children were being abused,” Petrany said. “The parental rights, the [religious] liberty right … is dependent on their being fit parents.”
“DFCS (The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services) and the juvenile court have to go with what their view of the best interest of the child is.”
In this case, that would be providing the children with their routine childhood immunizations, Petrany said.
DHS Commissioner Candice Broce sent a memo to DFCS employees on June 1 directing them not to seek immunizations for any child in temporary custody if the child’s parents hold a sincere religious objection.
Likewise, DFCS cannot direct foster parents and others caring for children in custody to have their own children immunized if they hold sincere religious beliefs opposing it, the memosaid.
Petrany, the DHS lawyer, said the agency’s recent change in policy was not due to the dispute in this case.
Thursday marked David Nahmias’s last day hearing arguments as chief justice. Nahmias will resign on July 17, and Michael Boggs will take over as chief justice.
The court next meets to hear oral arguments on Aug. 23.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Gov. Brian Kemp (left) and Georgia Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey (right) embarked on a statewide tour to promote mask use during the early months of the pandemic (Gov. Kemp official Twitter account)
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday that he will propose legislation giving Georgia parents the final say on whether to send their children to school wearing masks.
Kemp accused some school districts of “ignoring the science” on masking, as many states – including Democratic strongholds New York, California and New Jersey – have dropped mask mandates in recent days.
In Georgia, Atlanta Public Schools and the Gwinnett County Public Schools are among the school districts that have imposed mask mandates inside school buildings.
“This is gone too far,” Kemp wrote in a statement posted on Twitter. “Most of our citizens are not doing it around the state.”
Kemp came into conflict early in the coronavirus pandemic with then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, while Bottoms and the mayors of Augusta, Savannah and Athens asked the governor to require masks in state buildings.
At one point, Kemp sued Bottoms and other Atlanta officials over her decision to impose a mask mandate in Georgia’s capital city.
But with vaccines available to everyone who wants one and hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 coming down, municipal governments have moved away from requiring masks.
However, new Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has decided to continue the mask mandate Bottoms reimposed in December was the omicron variant of the virus was spreading.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – More Georgia families will be getting help from the state paying for child care under an initiative Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday.
Starting Nov. 1, Georgia will expand its Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program by 10,000 children. The program currently serves 50,000 children from indigent and low-income families.
“Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, we have made child care a top priority in Georgia for assisting first responders, essential workers, and other hardworking families who could not stop their important work or work from home during this challenging time,” Kemp said.
“CAPS is a great example of a public initiative that helps families, their children, and providers alike. This expansion will allow us to serve more Georgians.”
To make covering more children possible, the expansion will raise the program’s eligibility criteria. New guidelines will increase the entry income threshold from 50% of the State Median Income (SMI) to 85% of SMI.
Child-care providers also will receive additional help in the form of bonus payments aimed at helping more providers become Quality Rated.
The poorest Georgia families will get extra help in qualifying for the CAPS program. Those in the lowest-income category will see an income eligibility increase from 50% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) to 150% of FPL.
The expansion, funded through the American Rescue Plan Congress passed earlier this year, will run through Oct. 1, 2024.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Three child advocacy organizations in Georgia are launching an ad campaign encouraging both adults and children to wear masks to discourage the spread of COVID-19.
A series of public service announcements set to begin airing Tuesday features children too young to be vaccinated talking about adults in their lives – including teachers and school bus drivers – who are not able to take care of them due to illness.
“The adults charged with caring for our children are still getting sick,” said Dr. Erica Fener Sitkoff, executive director of Voices for Georgia’s Children. “We know some school districts are running double bus routes because bus drivers are ill. We know central office staff in some districts are subbing in classrooms because they can’t find enough substitutes to cover sick teachers.
“Our children count on these people to get them to school, teach them at school, and get them home safely. If the adults in a child’s life are too ill to care of them, that puts children’s safety at risk.”
Voices for Georgia’s Children is being joined in the “Mask Up for Kids” campaign by the state chapter of the American Academy for Pediatrics and PARTNERS for Equity in Child and Adolescent Health.
“Wearing a mask isn’t fun,” said Dr. Veda Johnson of PARTNERS for Equity in Child and Adolescent Health. “It can be cumbersome and hot. But evidence shows it is a primary way to stop the spread of COVID-19 for children too young to be vaccinated.”
The public service announcements will run statewide on broadcast television as well as digital and social media.
Cases of COVID-19 have been coming down in Georgia in recent weeks after a summer surge. Nearly 1.25 million Georgians have been diagnosed with the virus since the coronavirus pandemic began in March of last year.
More than 82,000 Georgians have been hospitalized with COVID-19. The virus has been responsible for 27,142 confirmed or probable deaths.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
