Meredith MacKenzie

Background

About Meredith MacKenzie

I am an experienced Registered Nurse with a passion for Pediatrics and Women's Health. I am currently serving as a Nurse Navigator for Wellstar's Small TALK Pediatric Literacy Team. We are bringing language nutrition to our Pediatric, NICU, and OB population at Kennestone Hospital. Critical to this program is highlighting the importance of frequent communication with children from the prenatal period through the age of 8 years. We are emphasizing the importance of talking, reading, singing, and playing with children as this greatly impacts brain growth and development. Ultimately, we are trying to improve child outcomes by teaching parents and staff the importance of frequent loving and responsive interactions as they form the foundation of a child's vocabulary. The more words that children know by the start of kindergarten, the more ready they are to take the next steps for learning to read. For those children with developmental concerns, we are hoping that by early recognition of delays, we can get them identified and referred for further help as early as possible. We are so excited that this program highlights the importance of health equity. We have currently translated all of our materials into Spanish. Our team is also highly integrated in community engagement. As Small TALK continues to grow and expand, we believe in getting to know our population intimately so we can best service our patients. Looking forward to continuing this great and needed work.