Indiana LEND Family Leader Rylin Rodgers Opens National Symposium on Children with Complex Health Care Needs

January 4, 2016

Rylin Rodgers, a nationally recognized family leader and the Training Director and with the Riley Child Development Center/Indiana LEND, was the opening keynote speaker at December 2015 Designing Systems That Work for Children with Complex Health Care Needs, a national symposium sponsored by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health held in Washington, DC. Her inspirational presentation, "Stage Setting: Families of Children with Health Complexity," prepared the symposium participants to keep families first as they explored various aspects of complex health care needs and the systems that serve them.

Children with complex health care needs are a sentinel population for shortcomings in the organization and financing of children's health care in the U.S. This invitational symposium identified and discussed issues within the general child health care system that have particular salience for the care of children with complex health problems. It provided a forum to learn from those making progress on these issues as well as those working in adult health care and health policy. Participants engaged in dialogue to identify solutions to the issues, make recommendations for adoptions of those solutions in practice, programs, and policy. The symposium agenda and handouts as well as an archived webcast are accessible at http://www.lpfch.org/cshcn/about-our-work/2015-symposium.