Child Life Child Life specialists facilitate coping and use a variety of interventions to support the emotional needs of hospitalized children, as well as their siblings. Child Life specialists prepare children for medical procedures in an age-appropriate way and provide children with
Article
Thriving Beyond a Swallowing Disorder: Amila’s Story Like many medical stories, Amila Watt’s begins with a mystery. For the first few years of her life, she struggled with one illness after another — usually, infections in her lungs or ears. Ear tube surgeries stopped the ear infections, but the respiratory illnesses kept coming
Article
7 Ways to Introduce Your Child to Wearing a Mask By Kathryn Robbins: As part of Connecticut Children’s Safe and Sound program, every team member, visitor and patient over age 2 wears a face mask. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, masks should be a habit for your family too, especially as you venture out to public places for summer fun . But it
Pediatric, Youth and Family HIV Program Connecticut Children’s and UConn Health’s Pediatric, Youth and Family HIV Program is comprised of a multidisciplinary team that provides comprehensive specialty infectious disease medical and preventative care for children, youth, women and families living with, affected by and
Article
Beyond Cardiac Critical Care: Joseph’s Story By Monika Gupta, MD: Every evening, when it was time to return home to their eight other children, parents Katie and Dan steeled themselves to say goodnight to their youngest. Their newborn son, Joseph, had been born with multiple heart defects, and was now in Connecticut Children’s pediatric
Service/Program
Hemangioma Program They often look like red or pink mounds on the skin, and happen when blood vessels grow in an abnormal way. An infantile hemangioma is the most common vascular anomaly in children. They often present at or soon after birth and grow quickly in early infancy. Infantile hemangiomas Specialty
Anesthesiology Children undergoing surgery, invasive diagnostic procedures, and some imaging tests and radiologic interventions may require anesthesia to block sensations in areas of the body that would otherwise experience pain or severe discomfort. Our pediatric anesthesiology team receive Suspected Neurosurgical Shunt Infection Clinical Pathway Ventricular-peritoneal shunt placement is a common neurosurgical procedure. Ventricular-peritoneal shunt infection is a known risk in children with this hardware. Early recognition and treatment is essential to prevent further morbidity, and it also leads to decreased medical
Article
Grow Brave: Kelly’s Remarkable Recovery From a Rare Bone Cancer It started like every other family dinner. Kelly sat around the table with her parents, grandparents, and two older siblings. They each talked about their days. Kelly, who was 10 at the time, mentioned that she felt an odd pain in her left leg. Her parents assumed it was growing
Article
Partnering for Family Support: Connecticut Newborn Screening Network and Alexion Charitable Foundation By Debra Ellis, NBS, RN: The Connecticut Newborn Screening Network (the Network), a program within the Office for Community Child Health , provides crucial support to families of infants who receive out-of-range newborn screening (NBS) results. Our goal is to ensure that every family—regardless of their
Article
Grow Committed: Zach’s Story Imagine: You are a star football player walking onto the field for the first game of your senior year. It is Friday night, and the stands are packed. You’ve already racked up three all-conference and two all-state selections in your first three years of high school; you’ve been

Service/Program
Running Analysis Program Connecticut Children’s two-dimensional running analysis in Farmington, Connecticut is a comprehensive program consisting of multiple running trials on a Noraxon™ pressure treadmill. The Noraxon treadmill has the ability to capture the force generated from each foot upon landing Article
Innovating with Purpose: Moving Beyond Semantic Saturation By Jacquelyn M. Rose, MPH: This is the second in a series of blogs describing the Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health’s journey to cultivating and nurturing a culture of social innovation. I am excited to lead a multi-disciplinary team from Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Article
Omicron FAQs: Is the New Variant More of a Risk to Infants and Toddlers? What About Vaccinated Kids? By John R. Schreiber, MD, MPH: This post was last updated January 19, 2022. Right around the time your family was celebrating Thanksgiving, you probably heard news about a new variant in the COVID-19 pandemic. The Omicron variant is now surging around the world, including in the U.S. Scientists are racing to