For the last week, Cook Children’s Center for Community Health provided mindfulness games and stress-relief techniques for kids, job training and oral health tips with free dental-care kits and cavity-prevention demostrations. KERA shared their family resources with children and parents. JPS shared QPR training, workforce development and lactation education. Friday focused on vehicle safety with Cook Children’s Center for Community Health, JPS Community Outreach & Education and JPS Trauma Injury Prevention. There was booster seat education and sign-ups for free car seat checks, car seat education and installation with a certified child passenger safety technician and motor vehicle crash prevention.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for these past 30 days! Keep an eye out for more events to come in the future!

This fourth week of our 30 Days of Wellness events at the neighborhood health center in Las Vegas Trail was full of fun!

Cook Children’s Center for Community Health shared activity dice games and easy 5210+ lessons. JPS stopped by to give lactation education and a behavioral health overview. Cook Children’s, JPS Health Network, TCC, and Workforce Solutions provided on-site job training information, registration, and answered any questions. The Demo Kitchen held its second nutrition class with practical meal ideas for picky eaters and growing appetites. We had more guided walk-throughs of the facility for local agencies to learn how to collaborate for community care. The week ended with JPS’s Connection Program Engagement and Cook Children’s Health Plan Engagement Table.

We had lots of smiling faces at our third week of our 30 Days of Wellness events at the neighborhood health center in Las Vegas Trail!

To kick off the week, The Parenting Center shared tips on discipline, positive communication and stress management while KERA Family Resources offered their services for kids and parents. JPS Connections program explained their financial resources and JPS Women’s Services provided support for breastfeeding families. The American Heart Association stopped by with lifestyle coaching to prevent or manage type 2 diabetes. Cook Children’s Center for Community Health brought fun fitness stations for every age and ability. Wednesday focused on poison prevention with Cook Children’s Center for Community Health and poison education with North Texas Poison Center. Jacob’s Journey stopped by to distribute naloxone as well. The Demonstration Kitchen hosted its first infant nutrition class alongside Mother’s Milk Bank.

The week wrapped up with CHAMP Texas having peer-led discussions and referral information. Cook Children’s, JPS Health Network, TCC, and Workforce Solutions had on-site job training information, registration, and answered questions. JPS Community Outreach provided information on behavioral health service lines, programs, and clinic locations. Cook Children’s Center for Community Health had several nutrition booths providing information on growing healthy foods, making healthy snacks, and promoting healthy development in your family.

We loved having our second week of our 30 Days of Wellness events at the neighborhood health center in Las Vegas Trail! It was the first full week of events and we were thrilled to see so many new faces stop by.

To celebrate the first week of school, the NHC Demo Kitchen invited kids to create quick, nutritious treats they can make at home for an after school snack. Cook Children’s Center for Community Health had multiple events throughout the week covering various topics such as asthma action plan basics for kids, safe sleep education, infant resources and parenting tools for communication, routines and resilience. JPS also hosted several events about their Connection Program, behavioral health services, diabetes education as well as lactation education. My Health My Resources (MHMR)  shared early-childhood development screening and support referrals. Lastly, Cook Children’s had art projects that teach kids to identify and express emotions and support coping skills.

This week kicked off the first few days of our 30 Days of Wellness events at the neighborhood health center in Las Vegas Trail! Volunteers from the Parent Pass phone app stopped by to explain how to navigate the app and share about all the local events and opportunities in the area. Cook Children’s Center for Community Health’s “Aim for Safety” initiative leaders and the JPS Trauma department shared hands-on firearm safety knowledge and safe storage resources. The Fort Worth Police Department demonstrated child-proofing essentials and gave tips to secure your home. It was a successful first three days and we are looking forward to more!

Join us for a full month of free wellness activities, education and family-friendly celebrations designed to help our community thrive. Every weekday (Aug. 6 - Sept. 5), you’ll find hands-on demos, health screenings, safety workshops, nutrition classes and more, all hosted by Cook Children’s and trusted local partners. No registration is required unless noted.

When: Aug. 6 – Sept. 5, 2025
Where: The neighborhood health center in Las Vegas Trail
2800 S. Cherry Lane, Suite 100
Fort Worth, TX 76116

“I'm a grandmother raising three children due to their mother's passing, and I feel like I'm just doing what their mother would want most,” McGee said.

This week, Cook Children’s Health Care System opened the Cook Children’s Neighborhood Health Center, provided by The Happy Davis Foundation and the Texas Rangers at 6825 Manhattan Boulevard in east Fort Worth. It is Cook Children’s eighth Neighborhood Health Center (NHC), all of them located in areas throughout Tarrant County where access to care is most needed. These centers provide primary health care, well-being services and more to families living in areas where residents are met with multiple barriers to accessing care, including limited transportation, food insecurity, language or literacy barriers, and a lack of awareness of available resources.

“Cook Children’s is very specific with where we build NHCs,” said Brian Leird, project manager for Cook Children’s Health Care System. “We conduct market studies to understand where in the Metroplex we can make the biggest impact. We find those health care deserts.”

The Cook Children’s Neighborhood Health Center, provided by the Happy Davis Foundation and Texas Rangers, would not be possible without the support of generous community donors who believe that collaboration builds strong and healthy communities. The new center will showcase this generosity and collaborative spirit with artwork featuring a local legend—Rangers Captain, the Texas Rangers mascot.

“The Texas Rangers and Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation are honored to join The Happy Davis Foundation in supporting Fort Worth’s children and this Cook Children’s Neighborhood Health Center,” said Karin Morris, Senior Vice President, Community Impact & Executive Director, Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation. “We hope that the artwork featuring Rangers Captain brings joy to children who visit the clinic and look forward to hearing about the great work that will be done there.”

Count On Compassion

For years, Monica Goyal, D.O., a Cook Children’s pediatrician, has cared for McGee’s grandchildren at another NHC location. Dr. Goyal is one of two physicians selected to provide care at the new center. Because of their trusted relationship with Dr. Goyal, the McGee family has chosen to follow her there. It will become the family’s new health care home.

“Dr. Goyal just has compassion,” McGee said. “She knows the whole story. She knows where these children came from and what their needs are, and she just goes above and beyond.”

As a child of immigrant parents, Dr. Goyal can relate to many of the challenges her patients face. It’s what compels her to practice medicine in the NHC setting.

“In these clinics, I see real opportunities to make a difference, whether it is by advocating for the child or empowering families to make informed decisions about their child’s care," Dr. Goyal said. “It’s work that keeps me truly engaged and connected to the families we serve.”

Triveni Kallur, M.D., a Cook Children’s pediatrician, also will deliver care at the new center. She speaks fluent English, Kannada, Telugu and Hindi.

“I’m excited to serve a community that often includes vulnerable populations and those who might otherwise fall through the cracks of the health care system,” Dr. Kallur said. “The NHC model allows us to bring care directly to those who need it most and make a lasting impact.”

Better Together

Cook Children’s Neighborhood Health Centers are designed to be a comprehensive health care home where children and families can receive the care they need, all in one location. By offering everything from sick care and injury treatment to well-child visits and vaccinations, to behavioral health and nutrition services, the NHCs connect the health and wellness dots for families, and eliminate the need to travel to multiple locations for various services and resources.

“Pediatric care is not about just seeing the pediatrician,” Dr. Kallur said. “Our typical patient has various needs. Sometimes they need a dietitian. Sometimes their family needs food, diapers, durable medical equipment or complex care. The NHC is a place where they’re able to find these things in one single place, and I think that’s the most important role the NHC is playing.”

The McGee family has accessed all of these services at one time or another. When the care needed goes beyond what can be provided at the center, Dr. Goyal and Dr. Kallur have the full weight of Cook Children’s Health Care System and Cook Children’s Physician Network behind them, allowing them to refer patients to the specialty physician or service they need.

But it’s the feeling that she’s a partner in her grandchildren’s health care that means the most to McGee.

“Dr. Goyal always makes me feel good because she says, ‘You know your grandchildren and you know their needs, and you work really hard to make sure they get all that they need,’” McGee said. “I know that I do, but to hear the doctor tell me makes me feel good.”

Dr. Goyal, Dr. Kallur, and the center’s staff are dedicated to building lasting relationships with the community they serve. Through the new center, they hope to impact the health of children and families, both physically and mentally, for generations to come.

“I’d love to see that we helped create a strong foundation for their future,” Dr. Goyal said. “And that families felt supported, empowered, and truly cared for along the way.

The center is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. To schedule an appointment, call 682-303-6825 or visit www.cookchildrens.org/nhc-manhattan.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve published a series of articles about the mental health crisis shaking the foundation of our youngest generation. It’s been a difficult and heart-wrenching conversation as, together, we’ve opened our eyes to this issue. This week, we want to bring you some good news.

An innovative yet practical collaboration that embeds family therapists into Cook Children’s Neighborhood Clinics (NHCs) is expanding access to mental health services for children in some of Tarrant County’s most underserved communities. It’s a silver lining, if you will, amidst a rapidly growing crisis.

The Crisis

The critical issue of mental health struggles among children isn’t a new one. It’s been lurking under the surface for years. One Centers for Disease Control statistic states that the percentage of children ages 6 to 17 who have ever been diagnosed with either anxiety or depression increased from 5.4% in 2003 to 8% in 2007 and to 8.4% in 2011-2012. To put skin on that, approximately 4.4 million children in the U.S. ages 3 to 17 have diagnosed anxiety, and about 1.9 million have diagnosed depression. Couple that with an inadequate supply of mental health professionals across that country and you have an undeniable gap in mental health care for hurting kids. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, there are only 8,300 practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists in the United States—a country with 74.2 million children.

Pile a pandemic on top of all of that and you have the makings of a nationwide mental health disaster. In many ways, COVID-19 opened Pandora's box. For millions of children, each measure taken to address the virus either triggered a new mental health struggle or exacerbated an existing one. The results are devastating, evidenced by the record number of children attempting or committing suicide. Some as young as 5 years old.

“I would say that, compared to last year, I have certainly experienced and seen a significant rise in the number of patients reporting anxiety, depression and even suicidal contemplation,” said Vida Amin, M.D., Neighborhood Clinics and Population Health Advisor.

The Silver Lining

Cook Children’s Health Care System took note of the adolescent mental health situation and the gap in services years before the start of the pandemic. Concern turned to action when the system began including mental health outreach as one of its yearly strategic initiatives. Over the course of several years, these initiatives have evolved from requiring universal depression screenings for all adolescents to improving access to mental health care for patients of Cook Children’s Neighborhood Clinics in fiscal year 2021. This latest initiative steered the concept of integrating family therapists into the primary care setting.

The program launched in December 2020—perfect timing given the pandemic’s toll. Three licensed family therapists rotate through Cook Children’s seven Neighborhood Clinics each week providing services that range from mental health evaluations to outpatient counseling to education for families and clinical professionals.

In its first month, NHC physicians and nurse practitioners referred a little more than 100 patients to the therapists for evaluation. By April 2021, that number had grown to more than 380 in a single month. So far, more than 111 patients have received outpatient counseling through the program.

Breaking Barriers

This care model helps alleviate three critical barriers for families seeking mental health services—access, cost and a reluctance to trust someone new with something so sensitive.

Right now in North Texas, it can take weeks, even months in some cases, to get an appointment with a therapist. There simply aren’t enough to go around. The same is true for many parts of the country.

“The demand for behavioral health care far outweighs the number of treatment providers in the community,” said Christina Reed, LMSW, director of operations at Cook Children’s Neighborhood Clinics. “It’s just too much for nonprofits and other providers to keep up with. So for us to be able to offer this to our patients gives them that access that has been lacking in the community.”

Beyond adding much needed therapists to the landscape, bringing these services in house improves access by speeding up the referral and evaluation process. It also signals that mental health is just as important as physical health. As therapists share knowledge and integrate their care plans, physicians and nurse practitioners are increasingly looking through the lens of mental health when engaging with their patients.

“It helps to demonstrate that behavioral health care is a part of health care,” said Kelly Rand, LCSW, manager of patient and family support services at Cook Children’s Neighborhood Clinics. “You don't have to go to another office somewhere that you've never been before and that’s not familiar to get that support. It crosses that barrier to where it's not two separate services. It's all health care, and it's all here together.”

Access and cost go hand in hand. If one can be overcome, the other is often the next big hurdle. Many private practice therapists do not accept insurance, especially Medicaid, leaving families no choice but to pay out of pocket.

“We serve primarily Medicaid families,” Reed said. “If you are a child or a family on Medicaid trying to find mental health services, that is challenging and that's no secret. It’s always been challenging. Our families are left without many options because they can't pay cash for a private practice therapist.”

Counseling services at the NHCs are billed to the patient’s insurance provider, be it a private insurer or Medicaid. If a patient is not covered by insurance or Medicaid, therapists connect them to a counseling resource in the community that offers free or sliding scale fee services.  

Opening up about internal struggles can be hard. Knowing who to trust with such personal and sensitive information factors into a parent or child’s hesitancy to reach out. Embedding therapists within the primary care clinics where patients have established relationships and familiarity with providers helps build a bridge between reluctance and trust.

“There is something that our families value when it is a Cook Children’s name behind that referral or service,” Reed said. “When it's their pediatrician saying, ‘it's this person I work with right here that can help you,’ there's a lot of comfort and trust in that in a world that can be really scary. There's still a lot of stigma. There's still a lot of hurdles to jump through, even just internally, when seeking out that service.”

Comprehensive Care

For children who need emergency intervention or more intensive care than can be provided through outpatient therapy, NHC therapists work with Cook Children’s emergency department, behavioral health intake department, partial hospitalization program and inpatient psychiatry program to get patients the level of care they need.

“The NHCs are now performing 200-plus psychosocial assessments and plans of care each month,” said Robert Goodwill, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Cook Children’s Physician Network. “This is an integral part of identifying specific needs related to the level or type of care a child may need. These added resources have resulted in increased counseling sessions at the NHCs as well as the ability to connect patients and families to other services in our system and our community.”

Of the nearly 1,200 referrals NHC therapists have received since the start of the program, depression and anxiety rank as the top two issues.

“Depression and anxiety are by far the most common,” Rand said. “A third one would be ADHD or issues around attention concentration. From there, I would say, issues around some kind of trauma transition or loss. So a death loss, the loss or separation of parents, a traumatic family event, or some kind of big transition in the household. Of course, those things contribute to and cause depression, anxiety and attention difficulties in children.”

As the rising referral numbers demonstrate, this collaboration is bringing critical services to the doorsteps of underserved communities. It’s making the mental health care space easier to navigate and offering help and hope to hurting children.

In 2018, she and her family joined the often overlooked but growing homeless population in Fort Worth. When Dana and her husband became unemployed and could no longer afford to put a roof over their heads, they turned to the Union Gospel Mission shelter for help. It was there that they were introduced to a program called the Homeless Initiative, which aims to provide a medical home for children experiencing homelessness in Tarrant County, a population of roughly 15,000.

“The Homeless Initiative program provides medical care, actually any service that Cook Children’s can offer, to the children who reside in the three shelters in Tarrant County: Presbyterian Night Shelter, Union Gospel Mission and Arlington Life Shelter,” said Pat Ballard, an RN at Cook Children’s and one of the two case managers for the Homeless Initiative. “We do well checks, sick visits, TB testing, we have a flu clinic, we get them up-to-date on vaccines, any specialty doctors that they need, dentists, dental care, dental surgery, we schedule it all.”

The Homeless Initiative began in 2008 as a collaboration between Cook Children’s and former Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief. The goal was to provide a path to medical care for this vulnerable population of children who, too often, were only seen by emergency room physicians.

“Back in 2008, about 98% of homeless children in Tarrant County were using ERs for primary care issues,” said Ballard. “That’s a huge burden for any ER and it puts stress on the whole system.”

The initial goal of the program was to make sure children had a primary care physician through Cook Children’s Neighborhood Clinics. These doctors would provide appointments for things like well checks, ear infections and upper respiratory conditions. It didn’t take long, however, for organizers to realize the need for mental health services and trauma-informed care, which takes a person’s traumatic experiences into account and promotes environments of healing.

“I don’t think we fully understood the problem in the beginning,” explained Denise Coover, LCSW, trauma informed care specialist at Cook Children’s. “Many of these kids have been through a lot of trauma. The more questions we asked, the more we learned.”

Coover joined the program in 2013 and provides on-site behavioral health assessments of children in the three shelters where the Homeless Initiative operates. Many of the questions in her assessment gauge what children have witnessed or endured such as physical and emotional abuse. She adds that being able to talk to the children themselves is key because often, parents don’t know the extent of what their children have been through, especially if they’ve been separated due to time in jail or foster care.

“A lot of our children have witnessed domestic violence. We have a lot of children who make disclosures of sexual assault, physical abuse, neglect and sex trafficking,” Coover said. “When we think about trauma, we have to remember the true definition is an event, or the threat of an event, that overwhelms someone’s ability to cope. If you can think of something that would overwhelm your ability to cope, our children are dealing with that.”

According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, children experiencing homelessness get sick twice as often as other children. They also suffer from more mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and withdrawal.

“We know while these children are in the shelter, this is our opportunity to intervene with them and provide them help,” Coover said. “They can’t wait six weeks, 12 weeks on a waiting list. They need intervention and they need it now.”

To make sure children experiencing homelessness in Tarrant County get the care they need quickly, Cook Children’s provides free transportation to the program’s families.

“We have a 16 passenger shuttle with a full-time, dedicated driver that delivers our kids to every appointment that we make,” Ballard explained. “That means picking up the parent at the shelter, going to school and getting the child, bringing them back to the clinic, whatever we have to do to get that child to an appointment we do.”

And if an appointment interferes with a family’s ability to eat lunch, the driver will make a special stop to make sure parents and children don’t miss a meal.

Another major goal for the Homeless Initiative is to make sure families transitioning out of homelessness have everything they need to succeed. Cynthia Thomas, LMSW, another case manager for the program, spearheads this mission. She says her job is to support and empower families experiencing homelessness.

“I provide strollers, car seats, anything a parent would need. They may need assistance in the education system, or school supplies. My role is to find out what non-health resources are necessary for them to be successful,” expressed Thomas, who works for The Women’s Center of Tarrant County.

While such supplies are necessary for success, Thomas’ main goal is to cultivate life skills families can take with them when they leave the shelters. To foster these skills, she organizes parenting classes several times a week at all three shelters. Thomas works with community volunteers and organizations across Tarrant County to create educational presentations meant to equip parents for raising children and teens.

“When they leave the shelter, we want them to feel empowered and we also want them to be able to speak for themselves,” said Thomas.

Some families need a little extra help with this, especially those who have children with special needs. Thomas often acts as a mentor and spokesperson for these parents who may have trouble navigating the special education system.

“A lot of times, the parent doesn’t understand the verbiage of the special education program, so I will go through it with them so they understand it better,” said Thomas. “One of the most rewarding parts of my job is seeing parents gain confidence and feel empowered. One mother was too afraid to say anything during meetings we had with the school. I was able to watch her learn how the system works, become comfortable and lose that fear.”

It’s been 11 years since the Homeless Initiative began and the impact is visible. As of December 2018, nearly 16,000 children and their families had been transported to medical appointments through the effort. Forty-five percent of those children returned to a neighborhood clinic after leaving the shelters, meaning they were no longer using emergency rooms as their medical home.

“I can go in the clinic two, three years later and I’ll see a mom sitting in the clinic with her kids,” said Ballard. “That’s really nice to see that you’ve made a difference in their medical care.”

The program isn’t intended to be just an appointment at a doctor’s office. Cook Children’s hopes it will be a support system when families need it most.

“It’s a chaotic world right now, but this is one of the things we don’t have to stress about,” said Brown-Bonner. “When I forget something, I get a reminder. They go above and beyond to make sure you’re comfortable and that things are taken care of. I’m very grateful and I know that there are other parents that are as well.”

For the Homeless Initiative team, the work seems never ending, but they know their efforts have a higher purpose.

“We know the outcomes for these children are not good if there’s no intervention medically and emotionally,” said Coover. “But the thing about resilience, that is the ability to bounce back from difficult life experiences, is it just takes one person believing in a child to build the resiliency they will need to succeed.”

"My mom used to say, 'When God closes a door, He always opens a window.' I have found that to be true many times in my life. My life as a pediatrician is a result of crawling through an open window when the door I thought I was supposed to walk through was closed to me."

Jason Terk, M.D., Keller, Keller Parkway

"Florinda Peak, the most amazing Mommy in the world, to 5 year old Dr Sandra Peak who did not want to practice reading… 'You have to learn how to read…because when you do the whole world opens up to you!'”

Sandra Peak, M.D., Lewisville

"The best advice my mother ever gave me was to give to others without expecting anything in return. (She also told me to never go outside with wet hair because I’d catch a cold, but medical school later disproved that. Sorry mom.)"

Diane Arnaout, M.D., Willow Park

"The best advice my mother ever gave me was, “never miss the chance to use a perfectly good bathroom” when you are out of the house."

Audrey Rogers, M.D., Fort Worth, Forest Park

Nicole Wineriter, M.D., Keller, HeritageTrace

"My mom told me to respect (be nice) to the nurses because they can either make or break your day."

Samuel Sheng, M.D., Arlington Neighborhood Clinic

"Encourage others. She always wrote notes to people for accomplishments, during sad times and just because."

Justin Smith, M.D., Lewisville

And finally, our favorite advice ...

"Marry Joan."

Tom Rogers, M.D., Forest Park. Dr. Rogers and his wife Joan have been married 59 years and today, she is a proud mother. "Joan worked to pay my way through medical school, gave me two great kids who are both pediatricians, and has allowed me to work without having to pay attention to small things like finances, maintenance of our house and yardwork. I couldn't be where I am today without her," Dr. Rogers said.

Happy Mother's Day from all of us at Cook Children's ...