Having insurance doesn't guarantee good health outcomes, but it is a critical factor.
Irwin Redlener
Many low-income 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.
The reality is that it's harder to recruit pediatric subspecialists if you're not recruiting them for a children's hospital.
Fallout shelters are like bell-bottoms. They've gone in and out of favor.
Poverty-fighting programs are not handouts - they are investments.
From a population point of view, it's actually very important that as few people as possible get the flu. People getting the flu is not a private matter. The risk for healthy people is really about your friends and neighbors and fellow travelers.
Hospitals are about healing.
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.
Poverty leads to hardship and failure.
Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control.
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.
There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event.
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.
Americans do not have a good track record when it comes to preparing for disasters, unless they see a clear possibility of personally being in harms way.
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.
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.
There's only so much academic disruption that a young child can deal with before he just can't catch up.
Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program are the two most important safety net programs for children.
Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy.
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.
Very large scale disasters, especially those that have occurred in the developing world, have very long recovery periods.
The larger the disaster, the more necessary it is to have the government as the principal driver of recovery.
Every single administration in American political history has put cronies and pals and donors into political positions. But normally those people become the ambassador to Liechtenstein or the deputy undersecretary of commerce.
No organization should be allowed near disaster unless they are willing to cooperate with some level of established leadership.
There are several very good websites which describe the details of preparedness planning for citizens.
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.
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.
There's detailed information on how to assemble a nuclear weapon from parts. There's books about how to build a nuclear bomb.
Seven million ship cargo containers come into the United States every year. Five to seven percent only are inspected - five to seven percent.
Nuclear terrorism is possible - it may be probable - but is survivable.
President Obama was deeply and clearly affected by the Sandy Hook disaster.
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.
