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.
Having insurance doesn't guarantee good health outcomes, but it is a critical factor.
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.
The reality is that it's harder to recruit pediatric subspecialists if you're not recruiting them for a children's hospital.
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.
Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control.
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.
Hospitals are about healing.
Poverty-fighting programs are not handouts - they are investments.
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.
