The New York State Pediatric Resident Advocacy Coalition (NYS-PRAC) is a group of NYC pediatric residents who work together to collaborate on child health advocacy initiatives. In 2022 the group developed and distributed Childhood Covid Vaccination posters that have been circulating around New York State hospitals. The group recently launched their second project, a cannabis edible advocacy campaign, that aims to educate families of young children about the risk of cannabis ingestion and safe storage practice as recreational cannabis use becomes legal in NY.
The cannabis edible advocacy campaign consists of three parts: creating patient education materials, developing op-Ed’s about the resident’s experience with cannabis edible ingestions, and advocating to NY State legislators about cannabis management to ensure package limits of 100mg THC for edible Cannabis-which recently became law.
The NYS-PRAC worked with various partners to create the new patient education materials, including the New York Office of Cannabis Management and NYS AAP Chapters 1, 2, and 3, who reviewed and approved their resources, and the NY/NJ Association Pediatric Program Directors (APPD) who helped fund production and distribution of the printed resources to the NYS Pediatric Residency Programs.
The materials are available in both English and Spanish and can be downloaded below:
- Cannabis Educational Brochure (English)
- Cannabis Educational Brochure (Spanish)
- Cannabis Educational Poster (English)
- Cannabis Educational Poster (Spanish)
The NYS-PRAC was initiated in 2021 in conjunction with a series of zoom advocacy talks coordinated by Laurie Gordon, M.A., M.D., FAAP, Director of the Pediatric Residency Training in Community Pediatrics and Advocacy and Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Since its inception, the group has expanded to include upwards of 70 residents from 17+ residency programs throughout the state and is currently working on its third project related to improving immigrant health in NYS.
The NYS-PRAC resident leaders are Dr. Daniel Birkhead from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Melissa Rubin from NewYork Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Farah Jooma from Maimonides Medical Center and Erica Ding from the Mount Sinai Health System.