Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health

Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) is a new consultation-based, collaborative service that gives professionals who work with infants, young children and their families in different settings throughout Wisconsin direct access to certified mental health specialists. 

Infant and early childhood mental health 

The IECMHC program would help optimize our current child/family support systems and programs by helping to build mental health awareness and expertise among our child/family service professionals by providing direct access to a network of certified mental health consultants. 

WIAAP Advocacy: Making Real Change

Join together with pediatricians across Wisconsin to advocate for change that improves the health and wellbeing of all infants, toddlers, children, and adolescents in Wisconsin. Get involved by communicating with legislators, offering your expert opinion, or work with WIAAP on an issue affecting your community. Press play to learn more about opportunities to advocate

Organized Health Advocacy

One of the most crucial ways WIAAP serves children, families and their healthcare providers is through organized health advocacy. We work regularly with state policymakers at the Departments of Health Services for Public Health and Medicaid, the Department of Children & Families, and the Department of Public Instruction. WIAAP also provides support for federal issues brought forth by our national AAP.

In alignment with our chapter’s strategic priorities, WIAAP collaborates with our state’s executive, legislative, and departmental leaders on policies impacting child and family health and the practice of pediatrics.

Learn about our government affairs:

Chapter Involvement

WIAAP responds to member requests to become more involved with our policy efforts. The WIAAP Legislative committee will bring together interested primary care clinician members to take the chapter’s strategic priorities and formulate a legislative “Blueprint for Children,” outlining issues most pertinent to patients and families.

WIAAP convenes a multi-organizational Pediatric Policy Council that reviews relevant issues at hand in the state, collaborating on advocacy on issues of common interest to strengthen messaging to decision-makers.

WIAAP is a collaborator with the Children’s Caucus in the Wisconsin legislature, focusing attention on issues concerning children and the pediatricians who care for them. Early childhood development and literacy and trauma-informed care are just a few topics under already under discussion.

A Call for Pediatricians to Offer Expertise and Support

WIAAP gathers resources, contact information, talking points, and key position statements for our members to make involvement accessible and straightforward. From calling state representatives to providing expert opinion, WIAAP seeks to empower all pediatric healthcare professionals to be the best advocate for children, locally and nationally.

We reach out to our members to contact legislators and other policy makers (federal, state or even local) to show support and offer expertise on issues critical to children. We provide position statements and talking points to help make this as simple as possible. It is said that a contact from a constituent represents the opinions of 200. One call from a physician weighs in far more significantly. You are trusted sources of information.

Within the past year, members of WIAAP have provided expert testimony on significant legislation affecting the health and safety of children in Wisconsin. WIAAP members detailed the importance of pre-participation physicals taking place in the primary medical care home and the significance of the statewide immunization registry. We call on our members to actively participate in the legislative process to ensure a high standard of pediatric care across Wisconsin and to protect the health and well being of our state’s children.

Annually, we set key strategic chapter priorities which define actions plans, resources, and quality improvement programs.