Highlights from Session 2 of Cook Children's Regional Child Health Summit

During the second session of Cook Children’s Child Health Summit, Cook Children’s Center for Community Health continued to share key findings on family and children health needs in our communities.

The Community Health Needs Assessment provides valuable insights from parents, caregivers and community leaders across our eight county service area – Collin, Denton, Grayson, Hood, Johnson, Parker, Tarrant and Wise Counties. These assessments help Cook Children’s identify community health needs and develop and implement strategies to address them.

On June 3, Cook Children’s shared those findings and subsequent calls to action. The health topics discussed during session two were mental health, caregiver support, injury prevention and oral health.

The full assessment can be found here, including demographic breakdowns, responses by county and caregiver, community leader, and expert quotes. See more tools for result breakdowns at the interactive data dashboard.

Mental Health
Across the eight-county service area, community leaders interviewed reported mental health care or counseling for behavioral/emotional concerns as the most needed health service in their community.

Nearly two in seven children (about 237,000) in our eight-county service area have at least one of the four most commonly diagnosed mental health conditions. The top two diagnosed mental health conditions were anxiety and ADD/ADHD.

Of the approximately 269,700 school-age children who needed mental health treatment or counseling, nearly half (48%) have a caregiver who had difficulty accessing needed mental health care for children. Families with an income under $50,000 in particular were more likely to report having difficulty accessing mental health treatment.

Caregiver Support
Caregivers’ challenges can contribute to adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, which are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood and can have lasting effects. The summit highlighted the prevalence of ACEs among children in our area and the impact those experiences may have.

About 18% of children in our service area (about 216,600) had two or more ACEs, according to the survey. The most common ACEs included having difficulty covering basic needs, like food or housing, and caregiver divorce or separation. Nearly 36% of under-resourced families reported it was hard to cover basic needs on the family’s income.

In the eight-county service area, more than half of caregivers (57%) said they are coping very well with day-to-day demands. However, that leaves about 43,100 children with caregivers who report they are not coping well.

Cook Children’s can continue to support families through the creation of parent and family community support groups and collaboration with existing programs. One particularly vulnerable population is people who have just given birth; the first 12 weeks after birth is a crucial time for caregiver support and child development. Cook Children’s can continue to support access to critical resources such as postpartum mental health support, treatment, and programs to meet the needs of families during this time.

Injury Prevention
Unintentional injuries, also known as accidental injuries, are the leading cause of death for children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nearly one in five children (about 233,300) in our service area received emergency care for an accidental injury. The most common type of unintentional injury varies by age.

The most common unintentional injury for infants is suffocation, mostly due to unsafe sleep environments.

For children ages 1 to 4, drowning (fatal and nonfatal) is the most common unintentional injury. From 2021 to 2023, Cook Children’s Medical Centers in Fort Worth and Prosper treated 224 drowning-related injuries that happened in bathtubs, open water, and pools or hot tubs, according to Cook Children’s Health Care analytics. Of those, 85% were pool/hot tub related, and overall, 8% were fatal.

In 2022, firearms were the leading cause of death among children and teens ages 1 to 19 in the United States, according to the CDC. From 2021 to 2023, according to Cook Children’s analytics, Cook Children's treated 23 patients for firearm-related injuries and 44 patients for injuries related to other gun types (i.e., bb guns, airsoft guns). Of households with guns in our service area, about 1 in 5 children (about 120,300) live in a home with a gun that is not always safely locked up.

For young kids and teenagers (ages 5 to 17) the leading cause of death in the U.S. is car accidents in the United States, according to the CDC. The risk of severe injuries and deaths in car crashes can be greatly reduced when kids are correctly secured in car seats, booster seats or seat belts that are appropriate for their age and size.

Accidental poisoning is another common danger, often from medication or chemical products. The survey revealed more than half of children live in homes where cleaning products and/or medications are not locked away.

Some ways in which Cook Children’s combats accidental injuries include educating caregivers about these dangers, providing resources and prevention tools and advocating for public policy changes.

Oral Health
The last portion of session two focused on oral health.

Two out of seven children (about 328,300) in our service area do not have “excellent” or “very good” oral health. In our service area, 57% of children (about 651,000) received at least two or more preventive dental visits aligning with American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommendations. Community leaders said some of the obstacles families face are a lack of providers and affordability of dental care. Others may not know the importance of oral health on growth and development.

Awareness and education are our most important tools to help families with oral health care. About 62% of children (about 726,200) have a caregiver who is unaware that a child should have their first dental visit by age one.

Since children visit pediatricians more frequently than dentists, collaboration between medical and dental professionals improves overall health outcomes for children through screening and education. In the eight-county service area, nearly 2 in 3 children had a medical professional recommend regular dental checkups for preventive care, and nearly 1 in 3 children were advised to visit a dentist for a dental problem. 

Recordings and slide decks from both sessions will be available on the Center for Community Health website.

If you are interested in learning more or have questions about the data, please email CHNAFeedback@cookchildrens.org.