VCU news

By Malorie Burkett

The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center has opened a new international adoption medical clinic to serve the initial and ongoing medical, developmental and emotional needs of parents and their children adopted from around the world.

The clinic offers a multidisciplinary team of specialists, including occupational therapists and a pediatrician with expertise in international medicine.

“Depending on what country they are originally from, children adopted internationally have variable amounts of social and emotional deprivation and potentially physical and medical deprivation,” said Suzanne Lavoie, M.D., professor and chair of pediatric infectious diseases and medical director of the clinic.

According to Lavoie, also an adoptive mother of three from Eastern Europe, this manifests itself in two areas. First, since many of the areas where children are adopted are less developed, there are fewer opportunities to ensure better health, including vaccinations, good hygiene and clean water. The children may have chronic medical illnesses in which they may have received little or no care.

The second major area involves developmental issues such as developmental delay, institutional autism, reactive attachment disorder and other psychiatric diagnoses. Lavoie says that even children without significant diagnoses can have difficulty adapting to life within a family. 

VCU provides complete medical exams and behavioral and social evaluations. The clinic also is available to pre-adoptive parents so that they may review medical information, pictures and videos that they receive in order to help them assess their referrals for any developmental or medical health issues before they commit to an adoption.

VCU’s international adoption clinic is the fourth clinic of its kind in Virginia. Similar clinics are located in Charlottesville and Northern Virginia. For more information, call 804-828-9713.