Every day in our clinic at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in North Philadelphia, I see upwards of 25 children, ranging from newborns to teens.
I spend as much time as I can talking with parents about their infants' feeding patterns, their toddlers' development and their adolescents' maturing bodies.
I try to provide helpful advice, appropriate medical care and positive assurances. But as I listen to the questions and concerns of the families I care for, I know that whatever we do, it may not be enough to get many of them past the extraordinary hurdles they face.
Several major reports have proven with reams of data that health and even life span are too often determined in this country by where a child is born. Even at a time when many Americans enjoy greater prosperity, many of my patients continue to bring these terrible statistics to life.
- A little boy has been hospitalized three times in as many years for severe asthma, and nearly needed to have a breathing tube thrust down his trachea to save his life during his most recent crisis. His mother gives him his daily medications right on time, and administers her toddler's rescue inhaler exactly as she should. What she can't do, however, is afford the professional cleaning and maintenance needed to make the old row house she inherited from her grandmother safe for her son. Like so many of my patients' homes, hers is plagued by mold that escapes her best cleaning efforts. On top of the mold, there are the cockroaches. Even if you don't see roaches, their saliva and feces get kicked up into the air and are a potent asthma trigger for children like her son.
- A 14-year-old girl came in late last year for a routine physical exam that, in a more affluent community, wouldn't have been at all routine. Like her mom, this girl has struggled for years with obesity. At each office visit, I've encouraged mom to help her daughter eat more fruits and vegetables and go outside to play. Common-sense health advice perhaps, but less than relevant to a mom who lives in a neighborhood where fresh food isn't sold, and where playing outside isn't safe. Now her daughter has Type 2 diabetes, a disease once thought to only afflict adults, but which is reaching epidemic rates among overweight teens in North Philadelphia.
To read the full article by Dr. Daniel Taylor, please click here.
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