Poverty is America's most common pediatric disease. Neither presidential candidate has paid sufficient attention to this problem.
Where are the children? Two months before a presidential election, the nation is focused on immigration and inflation. While candidates have addressed Social Security, tariffs and taxes, issues related to children have received far less airtime and column inches. Child health is absent from our electoral discussion. That is disappointing, given that kids are 22% of the population, and legislative policies play a large role in how they will fare over the next four years.
I know this because in two decades as a pediatrician, I've seen firsthand how strategies that put children first benefit my patients' health. Kids suffer without informed, evidenced-based priorities that protect them.
Children are the poorest members of our society. Eleven million children live below the poverty line and 1 in 6 children under 5 years of age is poor. Poverty rates for Black children are more than three times those of white children.
Poverty is America's most common pediatric disease. Poor children are more likely to be obese, suffer from asthma, be food insecure and do poorly in school. The scars of poverty are lifelong, and shorten life expectancy. Both candidates have not paid sufficient attention to this problem.
Well-established prescriptions against child poverty exist. Three years ago, lawmakers expanded the Child Tax Credit, putting more money directly in the pockets of my patients and in one year, reducing the child poverty rate by more than 50%. My patients used these extra funds for diapers, infant formula and food. The Senate just recently failed to continue this anti-child-poverty measure, a bill that even a divided House passed 351-70.
Vice President Kamala Harris discussed the importance of these credits and recommended increasing them to $6,000, but did so in a speech focused more on providing $25,000 to new homeowners, reducing price gouging for groceries and lowering prescription drug costs. This is admirable, but in a nation that prioritized children, this inattention would be unthinkable. Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said he supports them as well, but didn't address why he failed to support this policy in the recent Senate vote.
For 40 years, car accidents killed more children than anything else -- more than cancer, infectious disease and drug overdoses combined. Public health officials, governments and pediatricians steadily reduced the number of children dying in car accidents. Car seat laws were passed. Carmakers engineered child safety into vehicles. Not one of my premature patients leaves the hospital without a car seat test.
But for over half a decade, gun violence has been the number one killer of children. While school shootings make headlines, the daily drumbeat of children killed by homicide, suicide or accidents fuel this epidemic. One in 5 children who die in the United States succumbs to a firearm-related injury.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed two years ago, was the first meaningful gun legislation in 30 years, but it did little to protect children. It did not require gun owners to safely store their weapons in a locked box apart from the ammunition. Safe storage of firearms is a proven strategy to reduce unintentional firearm injuries and adolescent suicides. Four children die each day from gun violence. That the election isn't revolving around this single issue indicates how little children factor into our discourse.
Lastly, for kids to grow up healthy, they all must have health insurance. The number of children without health coverage has been rising for over a year. Since the official end of the COVID pandemic in April 2023, almost 5 million children have lost Medicaid coverage, roughly 650,000 in Florida alone. States have been cutting public health coverage from my patients and kids across the country. Sadly, 70% of kids who lose coverage were kicked off for bureaucratic reasons -- meaning their parents didn't sign a form or formally reenroll in public coverage.
Pediatricians nationwide are struggling to assist eligible families to reenroll in Medicaid, while simultaneously helping them afford their child's asthma medication, obtain preapproval for their diabetes treatment and renew other medications. Uninsured children are vulnerable, and the national blindspot toward these dramatic losses in Medicaid enrollment is disheartening.
As a country of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, we should press both candidates to outline a vision for universal children's health coverage, ensuring all kids receive timely, high-quality health care and an opportunity to flourish.
The election will have important consequences for our domestic, fiscal and international policies, but child health issues remain invisible. When we leave children out of national decision-making, we are saying the nation's future is irrelevant. The children are still here, just unseen.