July 17, 2026
Dr. Beth Mossman is Bringing the Doctor’s Office to the Doorstep
When immigration enforcement activity surged in Washington County in 2025, Beth Mossman, MD, FAAP noticed something alarming: families weren’t coming into the clinic. Cancellation rates at her clinic jumped 25 percent almost overnight. Screeners went unanswered. Kids with croup and other illnesses were staying home because their parents were too frightened to leave the house.
Dr. Mossman, a pediatrician at Hillsboro Pediatric Clinic and OPS member, didn’t wait for the problem to resolve itself. She got to work and the result is Bringing Care Home for Kids, a community-based, home visitation program that is now reaching some of Washington County’s most vulnerable children directly where they live.
Bringing Care Home for Kids became a reality thanks to the AAP’s Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) grant program. Dr. Mossman was one of just 48 recipients of the grant, which is awarded nationally to fellows and pediatric trainees and residents, and one of just 12 implementation community health projects. Dr. Mossman was selected alongside her collaborator Dr. Monique Gutierrez, a recently retired physician who stayed on specifically to support this initiative.
How It Started
The seeds of the project were planted in November 2025. Dr. Mossman was attending a meeting focused on early childhood social-emotional learning when it hit her: how would they ever reach the children who couldn’t make it to the clinic at all?
She had just returned from maternity leave. The cancellation rate spike was fresh. And she kept thinking about the families she knew weren’t getting care; not because they didn’t want it, but because the risk of leaving home felt too great.
So in January 2026, she started trial visits. Small, careful, and built on trust. The team began with families they had known for years. Then they kept going. From the beginning, Dr. Mossman was intentional about who she brought into the work. Every member of the Bringing Care Home team is an immigrant themselves. The team travels in identified vehicles and wears Hillsboro Pediatrics workwear that is visible to help families feel safe.
What the Visits Look Like
Every other week, the team heads out into the community. A typical visit might include multiple well-child checks for siblings in the same household, streamlining care for families in a single stop. The team also addresses oral health during visits, applying fluoride varnish using protocols developed with guidance from All Smiles, and referring families to local dental programs such as the Pacific University School of Dental Hygiene Studies for ongoing care.
The program’s goals are concrete: between now and the end of 2026, the team’s MA will provide in-home care to at least 15 children per month in Washington County. Their physician will provide in-home, well-child checks to at least 10 children per month on average. And across the full team, they aim to apply fluoride varnish to at least 200 children in the community by June 2027.
The Community Is Responding
What started as a careful, trust-based pilot has grown quickly. In just the last month, new partners have stepped forward to help connect the team with children who need care.
Bienestar, a housing-based charitable organization, is linking the program with farmworkers and recent immigrants. Centro Cultural, a health and education-focused group that provides 90 days of transitional housing, has opened its doors. Adelante Mujeres, which serves Latina women and families in the region, is now part of the network. Finally, the Hillsboro School District has connected the team with school social workers and family liaisons who can help identify children falling through the cracks.
One of the most urgent opportunities has emerged through Casa Amparo, one of Centro Cultural’s homes, where the team has identified approximately 40 children who currently have no medical care. Getting those children vaccinated, applying fluoride, and establishing them in a medical home is now a near-term goal.
“We’re really trying to expand this to the whole community,” Dr. Mossman said. “Our goal is to find every child in Hillsboro, Cornelius, and Forest Grove who is having difficulty getting care.”
If you are a pediatric provider with a family in your practice who is struggling to access care, you can connect them directly with Dr. Mossman’s team. Families can call Hillsboro Pediatrics at 503-640-2757 to request a home visit for well child checks, vaccines, and fluoride varnish.
Why It Matters
Dr. Mossman doesn’t speak about this work in abstract terms. The cases that stay with her are the ones that show how quickly a child’s health can unravel when fear takes hold: a longtime patient whose chronic condition spiraled after a family member was deported and he became too frightened to leave the house or an infant left without a caregiver after parents were taken away.
These are the children for whom Bringing Care Home for Kids was built. Real kids in real households in Washington County, Oregon, who need a pediatrician willing to meet them where they are.
A Model Worth Watching
The CATCH grant has helped Dr. Mossman move faster than she could have otherwise, helping fund the infrastructure, the partnerships, and the team. But the model she’s building is designed to outlast the grant itself. “If the community partnerships continue, we hope to keep it going,” she said.
For OPS, Dr. Mossman’s work represents pediatric medicine at its most adaptive–meeting families where systemic barriers have made traditional care inaccessible, and refusing to let those barriers determine which children receive care and which ones don’t.
We are proud to have Dr. Mossman as an OPS member, and grateful to the AAP’s CATCH program for recognizing and supporting this critical work.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Know a family who could use this kind of support? Have them call Hillsboro Pediatrics at 503-640-2757 to request a home visit. The team is available for well child checks, vaccines, and fluoride varnish for children in the Hillsboro, Cornelius, and Forest Grove area.
Interested in learning more about the AAP CATCH program? Visit www.aap.org/catch.
Learn more about OPS and how our members are making an impact in Oregon: www.oraap.org.
