T. Jann Caison-Sorey, M.D., receives American Academy of Pediatrics award
T. Jann Caison-Sorey, M.D., Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan senior medical director, PPO and Care Management Programs, has received the American Academy of Pediatrics 2008 “Founders of Adolescent Health Award.” The award recognizes exemplary achievement on behalf of adolescents on a local level.

Caison-Sorey was honored for the school-based and community health program she founded in Detroit that has been serving children and young adults since 1991. She said she is humbled and thrilled to receive the award.

Caison-Sorey said her passion for serving youth comes from her time in New York, where she was trained in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University – Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center.

Working with adolescents in the Bronx who did not have access to the most basic health care made an impression on Caison-Sorey, who later became affiliated with the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. At Henry Ford she served as division head, Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Detroit Campus, and became a founder and medical director for the Henry Ford Health System School-Based and Community Health Program, established in 1991.

“The school-based and community health centers represented a new strategy in addressing the unmet health care needs of underserved, high-risk and vulnerable youth in Detroit,” said Caison-Sorey. “We revamped the hospital clinic model and put clinics in the public schools which eliminated significant access barriers.”

Hutchins-McMichaels Middle School was the first middle school-based clinic established in Detroit. Health care services run the gamut from treatment of minor illness or injury to chronic disease management.

Once the clinic opened, student absenteeism due to illness declined dramatically, parents experienced a reduction in missed work days, immunization rates soared above 90 percent and pregnancy rates fell to near zero, Caison-Sorey said. As a result, other school-based and community health centers were established in economically depressed areas of the city that now provide health care services to more than 10,000 high-risk and vulnerable youth.

Caison-Sorey has been with the Blues for more than eight years. She remains active with the school-based and community health program she established by providing health care services for adolescents during evening clinic hours at the Detroit Youth Foundation.