Maryland LEND Faculty Receives Grant to Increase Access

August 19, 2019

Mary L. O'Connor Leppert, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O., a former LEND trainee and current LEND faculty, and Dr. Joyce Harrison, MD received a grant from the state of Maryland to continue their work to increase access of children with neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders by building capacity of primary care physicians to identify and manage these disorders. This work builds on a HRSA rural telehealth grant wherein Drs. Leppert and Harrison developed and delivered a curriculum using PROJECT ECHO to pediatric providers in rural parts of Maryland.

Preliminary data from that grant found that providers increased their confidence with children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and were managing more of the care of these children within the Medical Home. The current grant is to bring the previous grant to scale. Dr. Leppert is the Director of the Center for Development and Learning and Dr. Joyce Harrison is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at Krieger Institute, located in Baltimore, Maryland.