Our support will help our youth receive care that both embraces who they are today and provides the support and research to innovate their care, so they can become who they want to be tomorrow.
Children’s Hospital Adolescent Health and Mental Wellness Network
Our youth are not small adults. They are developing humans and their early experiences shape who they will be. From puberty and spanning throughout their teenage years, young people experience pivotal biological, psychological, social and cognitive changes as they transition from childhood to adulthood.
In this dynamic time for adolescents, their coming of age, Children’s Hospital is here to support them by providing leading-edge care that accepts each facet of who they are.
While current evidence suggests it can take 17 years for knowledge gained from research to become standard clinical practice, we will have missed a whole generation of teens…
Our youth can’t wait. They need help from our experts today.
As the third largest Children’s Hospital in Canada, last year alone we cared for 26,000 patients between ages 10-18. Children’s Hospital is a leading-edge provider of adolescent medical care for youth across the Southwestern Ontario region, from Windsor to London and Kitchener-Waterloo, and parts of Northwestern Ontario, including Thunder Bay and remote communities.
We are an epicentre for adolescent medical care and the primary hub for child and adolescent mental health care in our region. While this role helps unify our community’s mental health care efforts, there are still youth being left behind.
We want to expand our adolescent mental health care services to cover all of Children’s Hospital adolescent medical programs and services.
We are seeking support from TD’s Ready Commitment to develop a network of care that closes the gap and transforms Children’s into a network for holistic adolescent care.
TD’s seed funding for the Children’s Hospital Adolescent Health and Mental Wellness Network will ensure that when our 10 to 18-year-olds face unique challenges, starting with obesity management and gender diversity, they have one core clinical team that can address all of their needs – physical, mental and emotional – and provide consistent, personalized care.
Our Adolescents Can’t Wait
With a significantly increased risk of mental health disorders ranging from anxiety and depression to self-harm and suicidality, our network will begin by caring for gender-diverse youth as well as youth struggling with obesity.
Adolescents struggling with obesity face an increased risk of:
Life-Long Obesity
Cardiometabolic Diseases
Type 2 Diabetes
High Blood Pressure
Children’s Hospital network will enhance the recent research of CHU Sainte-Justine obesity management program, CIRCUIT, and:
1. Investigate how to enhance obesity management strategies for teens
2. Establish a healthy lifestyle-based intervention program that aims to improve patient outcomes through healthier food choices, enhancing physical activity, providing opportunities within their built environment, and support their increased risk for mental health issue.
Transgender and gender nonconforming youth and adolescents experience above average rates of:
Gender
Dysphoria
Depression, Anxiety and/or Suicidality
(nearly 30%)
Self-Harm
(over 50%)
Our network will provide them with the gold standard of care:
1. A gender dysphoria diagnosis made by mental health professionals trained in child and adolescent psychology
2. Being undertaken or referred to timely mental health treatment.
Our experts are the ones they can turn to so that this crucial time of growth and development doesn’t become a missed opportunity.
Meet the Experts Beginning our Network
Adolescent specialist physicians like Dr. Elisabeth (Lisette) Yorke
Specialized front-line treatment physicians like Dr. (Robert) Stein
Life-changing researchers like Dr. (Greta) Bauer
Children’s is actively recruiting for cutting-edge clinicians and researchers to join us and begin changing adolescents’ lives today!
The partnerships that our network fosters have the potential to close this gap between the research bench and our kids’ bedsides, bringing current findings directly into daily practice.
With your support, today’s youth won’t miss out on the chance for wrap-around care. TD’s generosity will ensure that our youth will receive the best care today and the ongoing support to propel them into a healthy future.
We thank you for your kind consideration of our request and would be pleased to work with you to recognize your support in a way that would be meaningful to you.
For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Baxter
Director, Community Relations & CMN Program Director
Children’s Health Foundation
519-432-8062 x 1699
jbaxter@childhealth.ca
Director, Community Relations and Children’s Miracle Network