At Children’s National in D.C., EdNavigator Empowers Doctors to Take Action on Patients’ Education Needs

Straddling the busy corner of 14th Street Northwest in Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital’s Columbia Heights primary care clinic serves a community in flux. Historically, Columbia Heights was home to a rising Black professional class; today, the neighborhood is still occupied by families with deep roots here, now living alongside a large population of immigrants from Central and South America, as well as transient professionals working in government jobs. As a result, the families that seek care at this Columbia Heights clinic represent a wide range of needs.

Children’s National (CNH) works to meet all those needs and more. Beyond medical care, CNH’s five outpatient clinics, including the one here in Columbia Heights, serve communities across D.C. with various ancillary services. The Columbia Heights location offers a legal clinic, social workers, and a “food pharmacy” for patients and their families. Columbia Heights has Spanish- and Amharic-speaking providers on staff; tablets stationed in front of each procedure room offer live, virtual interpretation services in almost any other language. American Sign Language is frequently in use, owing to the nearby presence of Gallaudet University.

For Columbia Heights pediatrician Sarah Durrin, the clinic’s focus on being a “medical home” for a diverse and evolving community is what drew her to CNH, and Columbia Heights specifically. “Children's National has a really great focus on public health and community advocacy. And this clinic in particular was appealing to me because of the kind of immigrant health work that they do.”

Now, in partnership with EdNavigator, the clinic also offers its patients support with education-related challenges. When a young patient needs an evaluation for special education services, or a caregiver is concerned that their child’s existing Individual Education Plan (IEP) or 504 plan is not being honored by school, their provider will refer them to a Navigator, a seasoned education professional with expertise traversing public school systems in D.C. and Maryland. The Navigator will call the family within a matter of days and work collaboratively with them until the problem is resolved. Navigators leave parents with more than just a solution to their child’s current challenge: They aim to empower caregivers with knowledge and tools to advocate for their children’s schooling in the future, and to share that knowledge with their neighbors.

Dr. Durrin comes to medicine with first-hand insight into why education support is such a vital part of healthcare: Before becoming a doctor, she was a high school science teacher. “I taught on the Southwest side of Chicago, with mostly Spanish-speaking families. I loved the families and I loved the kids, but teaching was not my passion.” Now working as a physician, she recognizes the urgent need to offer families support with access to special education services, but acknowledges that for most doctors, there simply isn’t much they can do.

Prior to partnering with EdNavigator, families in the clinic received “variable” levels of support addressing whatever education-related challenges they were facing. In large part, that was because even if the providers recognized the problem, they didn’t have the tools at hand to help solve it. “One of the things we ask a lot in medicine is what is the purpose of unearthing information if you don't have something to help with it?” Dr. Durrin says providers might generate a letter in support of an evaluation request, or inform a family of their legal rights—but that was largely all they could offer.

Now, with the ability to refer families to EdNavigator, Dr. Durrin says more of her colleagues, even those without in-depth knowledge of the education system, are better equipped to address school-related challenges with their patients. “It makes people more willing to talk about it and screen for it, because there is an actionable step we can take,” she says. “We can bring in someone who is actually an expert in this.”

It's also a time-saver for providers. Even for providers like Dr. Durrin, who are versed enough in education to be able to offer some advice to families, the opportunity to refer patients to EdNavigator means she can spend valuable appointment time focusing on other issues. “Now I’ll ask a few questions about school and if EdNavigator is appropriate, I’ll make the referral, rather than trying to suss it all out myself,” she says. “Honestly, that could take a whole visit.”

To date, most of the referrals from CNH involve requests for special education evaluations. Providers at CNH also refer families for support with D.C.’s complex enrollment process, which requires them to navigate an application for both district and charter school options spread across the city.

Beyond resolving the issues families need help with, Dr. Durrin says the partnership with EdNavigator has helped her and her colleagues become better informed about the education system in D.C., and the pitfalls families can encounter, particularly in the special education process. For example, it’s common for physicians to hear from a family that they’ve asked for an evaluation for their child, but had the request denied by school.

“I didn’t think they could do that,” Dr. Durrin says. “But it turns out in D.C. they can.” In D.C., an evaluation determination meeting takes place before an evaluation request is granted. Dr. Durrin says she’s learned from Navigators that that step is a common pain point for families, who are often left out altogether—which aligns with what she hears from patients. Armed with better knowledge of how the system works—and its shortcomings—she and her colleagues are in a better position to point families in the right direction, and to recognize when more significant support is needed.

Though the partnership is relatively new, Dr. Durrin says the program is already a trusted and valued resource among her team. “I’ve had such positive feedback on the reliability and consistency of the support that’s offered, and what a great resource it is for families—and how much stress it takes off providers’ backs,” she says. “To have something that can actually help families when they’re going through these challenges with school—that’s really wonderful.”

Banner photo credit to Bialek.