Sitting in a conference room in Washington D.C. twenty years ago, my clinical colleagues, Drs. Diana Cutts, Patrick Casey, Carol Berkowitz, and Maureen Black, and I shared disturbing and tragic stories of the consequences of the 1996 welfare reform on the health of children. I told them of a child at Boston City Hospital (now […]
President Trump’s executive order directing agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to propose policy changes that cut people off of federal assistance programs will harm the health and well-being of our nation’s youngest citizens and their families. This proposal is […]
In Virginia, one pediatrician tweaked electronic health record billing codes so Medicaid and private insurers are paying for patients’ trips to food banks. In California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Vermont, variant comprehensive models of getting payers involved in setting standards for dealing with food insecurity are underway or already up and running. But the mounting push […]
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our nation’s first line of defense against hunger and food insecurity. A strong SNAP in the Farm Bill is necessary for optimal child and family health. However, based on research from Children’s HealthWatch and from others, the proposed changes-specifically changes to Broad Based Categorical Eligibility, Heat and Eat, […]
Opportunity Starts at Home is a national multi-sector movement which generates widespread support for federal policies that protect and expand affordable housing for low-income people. The campaign launched on March 20, 2018 with Children’s HealthWatch as a founding partner. Visit Opportunity Starts at Home
Over the past several years, Health care systems and individual providers have increasingly recognized their role in identifying and addressing their patients’ food security needs. Efforts to screen for food insecurity in health care settings and facilitate successful connections to anti-hunger organizations and emergency food providers have increasingly become squarely positioned within systems of health […]
In this report card, Children’s HealthWatch research highlights the disparities immigrant families with young citizen children experience in their ability to afford enough food and describes the severity of that deprivation. This report card also explores how the length of time mothers have lived in the U.S. is related to their family’s ability to afford […]
Understanding that stable homes provide an important platform for individual success and thriving communities, nine of the nation’s largest private foundations have joined forces to create the Funders for Housing and Opportunity collaborative with the goal of ensuring individuals and families across America who spend more than half of their income on rent – or […]
Despite the increase in interest and attention to food insecurity in health care settings, available health care terminology and codes to document food insecurity and related activities are both underutilized and under-developed. Promoting and improving opportunities to document assessments and interventions related to food insecurity in electronic health records (EHRs) are critical for: Enabling documentation […]
Screening for adverse childhood experiences that can influence future trajectories of child health has become a priority for child healthcare professionals. Most of us are familiar with the two-question food insecurity questions embedded in the AAP’s Bright Futures and Bright Futures Toolkit, but have you ever considered housing instability to also provide a window into […]