UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP), popularly known simply as “Children’s”, is part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the only hospital in Southwestern Pennsylvania dedicated solely to the care of infants, children, teens and young adults. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and features a state-verified level 1 pediatric trauma center, one of four in the state. Care is provided by more than 700 board-certified pediatricians and pediatric specialists. Children’s also provides primary care, specialty care, and urgent care at over 40 locations throughout the Pittsburgh region, as well as clinical specialty services throughout western Pennsylvania at regional health care facilities. As of 2021 the hospital was ranked as the ninth-best children’s hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.
The Division of Child Advocacy at CHP is part of the Department of Pediatrics and includes with an NCA-accredited CAC, a Child Protection Team with 24/7 availability and out-patient clinics in Pittsburgh, Erie and Johnstown for maltreatment evaluation and to provide primary care to children in the foster care system. Each year, the Child Protection Team evaluates approximately 500 children, the CAC performs approximately 800 forensic interviews and the clinics evaluate over 2000 patients. The CAC also has CHP nurses embedded in the CPS offices in Allegheny and Erie County in order to improve the health care of children involved in the child welfare system in these counties.
Site PI: Rachel Berger, MD, MPH
Rachel Berger, MD, MPH is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh and chief of the division of Child Advocacy at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. In addition to her clinical work evaluating children with concerns for maltreatment, she has spent over 20 years as a clinical researcher. Her research focuses on decreasing fatalities and near-fatalities due to physical abuse in young children by improving identification of abuse using serum biomarkers, clinical decision rules and the electronic health record. She has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She served on the Pennsylvania Task Force for Child Protection and as the research lead for the Federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF) during the Obama administration. She was a senior policy fellow for Casey Family Programs in 2019 during which time she focused on improving collaboration between Child Protective Services and medical professionals. Since 2019, she has directed Project MAGICO – Medical Assessment Guidelines to Improve Child Outcomes – in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, a model program of collaboration between CPS-medical professionals
CAPNET 