Description
- Abstract:
- Background: The Hasbro Outpatient Psychiatric Evaluations for Justice-involved and At-risk Youth (HOPE for Justice) Clinic was founded in 2019 to address the unmet, yet critical need for outpatient psychiatric services to youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile legal systems. Referrals to the clinic come from residential treatment programs, group homes, the Rhode Island Training School (RITS), hospital-based clinics, community-based organizations, Family Court, and DCYF. The clinic offers psychiatric evaluation, medication management, and limited psychotherapy to patients. Objective: This retrospective chart review aims to characterize the clinic’s patient population and assess associations among referral sources, demographic factors, and clinic engagement with the goal of identifying areas of improvement. Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of 309 patients ages 4-20 seen between February 2019 and June 2025 at the HOPE for Justice Clinic. Patients with incomplete or no appointment records were excluded. Data was extracted from LifeChart, Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s EPIC electronic health record system. Variables included referral source, age at evaluation, sex assigned at birth, race, ethnicity, language, placement, insurance, number of appointments, and RITS (Rhode Island Training School) involvement. The primary outcome was clinic retention, defined as: attending no appointments, attending an initial evaluation only, or attending 1+ appointments. Results: Patients who self-referred or were referred from hospital-based outpatient psychiatric clinics had the highest rates of attending one or more appointments after initial evaluation (100%), while patients who were referred from RITS had the lowest (46%). Rates of attendance for one or more appointments after initial evaluation are lowest among patients aged 18 (56%) and 19 (50%). Conclusions: Youth referred from RITS and those aged 18–19 demonstrated the lowest rate of attending 1+ appointments, highlighting re-entry from carceral settings and the transition into legal adulthood as critical points where participation in care may falter. These findings suggest a need for targeted interventions, such as proactive discharge planning, increased care coordination, and focused services for transition-age youth.
- Notes:
- Scholarly concentration: Caring for Underserved Communities
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Citation
Roa, Jessica, and Lowenhaupt, Elizabeth,
"Associations Among Demographic Characteristics, Referral Sources, and Clinic Engagement at the HOPE for Justice Clinic"
(2025).
Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/5w4g-bz76
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Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium
The Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium is an annual event at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University that provides Year II medical students a venue to present their summer research in a poster format. Participation in the Symposium …...