Washington - Dr. Robert A. Crittenden
Updated September 2007
In seeing the need for children to have care, not simply insurance, Robert A. Crittenden, M.D., M.P.H. created Kids Get Care (KGC), a program within the King County Health Action Plan that places care as the primary focus to ensure that children receive early integrative and preventative physical, developmental, mental, and oral health services through attachment to a healthcare home.
KGC improves children's health care in cost-effective ways by following several basic tenets. First, KGC works to ensure that children receive services first by attaching them to a healthcare home and then help them establish eligibility for public insurance coverage. KGC recognizes that prevention improves health and can save money. Through integrating physical, developmental, and oral health services KGC is able to ensure that children are receiving all the necessary services. Finally, KGC creates a network of community connections trained to identify children who need services.
With the help of health care providers, case managers, child care workers, and trained community staff KGC has seen much success in the past two years with seven hub sites throughout the low-income communities of Kings County, Washington. As of June 2005, 9,000 children have been connected to a healthcare home, 50,000 children screened for developmental milestones, and 3,000 health care providers and community staff members trained to provide developmental health surveillance and health care home linkages. For more information on Kids Get Care visit their website at http://www.metrokc.gov/health/kgc/.
Now that all kids in the state of Washington will have health converage due to recently passes legislation, he is working to make sure the gains are maintained and that there are systems of care and medical homes for all children and their families. He received the 2006 Cynthia Shurtleff Award from Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies of Washington.
Dr. Crittenden received his MD and his MPH from The University of Washington, and also received a special diploma in Social Studies from Oxford University. Dr. Crittenden has practiced as a family physician for over twenty-seven years in Central and Southeast Seattle, serving primarily urban underserved populations. Additionally, Dr. Crittenden was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with Senator George Mitchell, and a health policy advisor to Governor Gardner of Washington. Currently, Dr. Crittenden is the Chief of Family Medicine Service at Harborview Medical Center, Director of the Office of Education Policy in the Dean's office, and a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. Dr. Crittenden has been President of the Rainier Institute and a Soros Fellow. He is currently Chair of the Working for Health Coalition in Washington State that focuses public dialogue on safety net issues. He is also the Executive Director of the Herndon Alliance, a nation coalition of about 50 organizations focusing on increasing the base of people supporting affordable health care for all people in America.
