Office of Child Health Equity
Learn more about our mission and our approach
Mission
The Office of Child Health Equity (OCHE) envisions a world where all children reach their full potential. We strive to create communities and a world where healthcare and life outcomes are equitable and just.
Program Overview
The Office of Child Health Equity (OCHE) strives to transform the Department of Pediatrics into a force for equity and justice for mothers, children and families. In doing so it provides a unique roadmap, articulating how to advance a comprehensive pediatric commitment to new models of impact beyond the clinic and hospital walls.
The pandemic has exposed widening inequities in child and family health. In response, the Stanford Department of Pediatrics has both initiated new programs and strengthened extant efforts to address this fundamental challenge. The Office of Child Health Equity would unify these varied efforts and build out into bold new directions, providing essential academic infrastructure to sustain our nationally recognized continued commitment to health equity and social justice.
The OCHE integrates three arenas of departmental action: 1) Policy participation; 2) Community engagement; and 3) Equity-oriented research.
What is Advocacy?
A commitment to ensuring that all efficacious health and social services are provided to all children in need. Advocacy requires more than good will; it requires both a base of knowledge derived from analytic insight and technical expertise in advocacy, which must be learned through directed educational experiences.
The Office of Child Health Equity seeks to provide a strong academic base for advocacy activities and recognizes the proper role of such activities within a university setting. Specifically, the objectives of the OCHE are:
From Community to Policy
How a local summer meal program grew to feed children statewide and influence a national discussion.
During the Great Recession pediatricians were seeing unprecedented levels of food insecurity. The Office of Child Health Equity (OCHE) at Stanford Medicine partnered with a local school district in 2012 to launch the district’s first summer meal program. Through the course of the program, they leveraged public and private funding to feed both children and adults--the first program in the region to prioritize feeding adult caregivers. Many partners including the YMCA of Silicon Valley and Second Harvest Food Bank were instrumental in growing, funding, and sustaining this summer meal program which continues today.
