Snow, Salt, and Big Wins

Long before Dr. Suzette Brown won The David Prize in 2020 for her work building Strong Children Wellness, she learned what community care looked like inside her mother’s preschool. Raised by Jamaican immigrant parents between Brooklyn and Long Island, Suzette and her twin sister grew up at Tiny Tots Kollege, the Hempstead preschool their mother founded in the 1980s. It was never just a school. “She went beyond just educating the kids,” Suzette says. “She did so much to support the parents.” Suzette saw proof at a young age that caring for children meant caring for families as a whole.

That philosophy followed Suzette into medicine. After navigating medical school and early work in global HIV programs, Suzette became increasingly drawn to the reality that children’s health was shaped not just by medical needs, but by social needs like housing, food security, and addressing trauma. What frustrated her most was how little traditional healthcare allowed her to address those realities.

Strong Children Wellness emerged as a direct response. Instead of centering care just in hospitals, Suzette and her collaborators embedded pediatric primary care within trusted community organizations to screen families for unemployment, homelessness, mental health needs, and more, and to connect them with support, starting with the Child Center of New York in Queens. Just as the model was taking physical shape in 2020, Suzette was awarded The David Prize.

Five years later, Strong Children Wellness has grown exponentially, serving more than 2,100 families across the five boroughs in their Queens sites, integrating primary care, behavioral health, care management, and social services all under one roof. “Sometimes I sit back and think, ‘How did this grow from this idea to this thing that has just really taken on a life of its own?,’” Suzette says. “It's been an absolutely remarkable, incredible journey.” With new state funding to expand even further, Suzette’s David Prize vision has evolved into a living model: one that proves healthcare works best when meeting families where they are.