Many children face chronic stress from nutritional deprivation or persistent violence at home or in the community. By addressing their medical, emotional and developmental needs through a comprehensive clinical care model, we can lower their risk of developing long-term physical and mental health issues.
If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.
Every school should have well-rehearsed emergency response protocols covering a variety of possible scenarios, from fire to armed intruders. Schools should have good lines of communications with local emergency response officials and practice those relationships in drills and special exercises.
Police officers and firemen are so visible in their daily work, there's no mistaking they're there - and that presence makes people feel secure.
Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy.
There are several very good websites which describe the details of preparedness planning for citizens.
There's detailed information on how to assemble a nuclear weapon from parts. There's books about how to build a nuclear bomb.
Having insurance doesn't guarantee good health outcomes, but it is a critical factor.
There has been a transition from a nuclear-annihilation scenario to an isolated-terrorist-nuclear-bomb scenario. But we're still locked into a mind-set that nuclear war would be so overwhelming that any kind of preparedness would be futile.
The reality is that it's harder to recruit pediatric subspecialists if you're not recruiting them for a children's hospital.
When children are hungry, sleepy from a night spent fighting untreated asthma, or hobbled by symptoms of undiagnosed illnesses, they are less likely to do well in school.
Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control.
Kids get a lot of lip service in disaster planning, but they tend to get far fewer resources than they need. The mantra of 'children are our most valuable resource' is almost never matched by actual funding.
The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.
Poverty leads to hardship and failure.
Poverty-fighting programs are not handouts - they are investments.
Even the best community organizations and faith-based initiatives and the extraordinary charity of Americans across the country can't carry the brunt of eliminating poverty.
There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event.
The risks are far greater to your child of not getting immunized than any kind of speculative potential relationship between the vaccine and the development of autism.
Fallout shelters are like bell-bottoms. They've gone in and out of favor.
Seven million ship cargo containers come into the United States every year. Five to seven percent only are inspected - five to seven percent.
If we ensure access to health care and 'best practice' asthma treatment for children, especially those at high risk, there is the potential to save the health care system billions of dollars.
The problem with most children's hospitals is that they are passive. They are high quality. They are filled with the best doctors. But their function is to wait until kids get sick and get referred in.
