FLINT, Mich.—A unique new pediatric healthcare facility in Flint is gaining acclaim for bringing cutting-edge services and settings to those who need them the most.

For many families with children who experience behavioral health issues, accessing treatment and care often requires traveling to multiple care facilities and seeing many different teams of specialists. The Center for Children’s Integrated Services at Genesee Health System (GHS) in Flint was designed to integrate these care services and improve access to behavioral health care for underserved families in Flint.

Designed by national architecture firm HED, the new facility brings all of GHS’s children’s programs into one facility, including the three core children’s behavioral health programs. The health center features an autism playground area intended to be used as a therapeutic tool that allows children with autism to engage with nature through sensory-rich features. The facility is also located along a main bus line, improving transportation accessibility to health services for low to moderate income families.

In the wake of the Flint water crisis The Genesee Health System (GHS) needed a facility to unify its behavioral health services, improve access to behavioral health and primary care services to the underserved low- and moderate-income families of Flint, and create a central facility to develop medical innovation in the evaluation and treatment of lead poisoning.

Working closely with GHS, HED developed a design for a brand-new building that brings all of GHS’s children’s programs under one roof, including the Neurological Center for Excellence (NCE), Child and Family Services (CFS), and the Children’s Autism Center. The Center for Children’s Integrated Services helps reshape the physical and human landscape of Flint, ensuring that the NCE has a permanent physical home, continuing the important work of helping Flint children and their families get the access to behavioral health and primary care services they need.

The design brings together the three core children’s behavioral health programs (the NCE, CFS, and Autism Center) as well as a Community Outreach and a Federally Qualified Health Care (FQHC) center. HED co-located all these programs into one 60,000-square-foot building and utilized careful layouts to improve navigation and efficiency for patients, families, and medical staff while enhancing visibility and accessibility. This facility is vital to supporting the GHS in providing services to Genesee County residents (both children and adults) with serious mental illness, children with serious emotional disturbances and developmental disabilities, and adults and children with substance use disorders.

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