Alumni Association honors Landon Krantz, MD
Landon Krantz, MD, received the third annual Cincinnati Children’s Alumni Association’s Residency Award during the Medical Staff and Alumni Dinner on April 21. The award recognizes a third-year resident who has exhibited clinical and educational excellence and participated in scholarly activities that impact the health of children in our community.
Krantz’ work has focused on medical issues for pre-teens and teens. His main focus was a quality improvement project at the Hopple Street Health Center, during which he helped increase the HPV vaccine completion rate from 51 percent to 62 percent over a nine-month period. He accomplished this through physician and staff training to strengthen their recommendations, as well as clinic interventions designed to encourage more frequent recommendations.
“We made sure that staff were armed with data to strengthen their background knowledge of HPV and used weekly individual audits to reinforce best practices,” Krantz explained. “We also worked with our Epic team to implement adolescent vaccine reminders for all primary care visits, which was previously only used during infant/toddler visits.”
Other Cincinnati area hospitals have recognized Krantz’ work with the HPV vaccine, and he has been a guest speaker on this subject at three other residency programs: The Christ Hospital, University of Cincinnati’s Med/Peds department, and St. Elizabeth Healthcare. He also presented his work at the Cincinnati’s Children’s Pediatric Grand Rounds in June of 2016.
In addition to his work with the HPV vaccine, Krantz has led the resident education outreach program to Rockdale Academy Elementary, coordinating talks on ADHD, safety, asthma, and the importance of check-ups. He expanded the program by merging it with the “Healthy Me” program, which provides comprehensive sexual health education to fifth- and sixth-graders, teaching them about puberty, at-risk behaviors and reproduction, which are not required courses in Cincinnati public schools.
Krantz also assisted in an Emergency Medicine study regarding pregnancy risk and contraception needs for teenagers. Through a partnership with the adolescent and gynecology departments, the project aims to facilitate the initiation of safe, effective birth control for patients in the Cincinnati Children’s ED. To date, 100 patients have been enrolled for the study, with 48 percent choosing a long-acting reversible contraceptive as their preferred option.
When the physician or other healthcare provider initiates the conversation, Krantz finds that teenagers are very interested in learning about their health and often have great questions. The social stigma associated with some of these conversations has created a gap in the teen’s healthcare education, which makes both primary care visits and school outreach programs valuable settings for open dialogue. After finishing his residency at Cincinnati Children’s, Krantz will be employed with a private outpatient primary care center in Kenosha, WI, that has an affiliation with the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.
