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| Inequality: Children and Healthcare |
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by Gloria A. Ojo RN, MBA - September 23, 2010
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In general, children depend on parents/guardians for their overall well being. Their dependency on adults can make them vulnerable to getting inadequate healthcare which can lead to poor health, behavioral problems, academic failure, malnutrition, violence or even untimely death. Children who live below the poverty line are in jeopardy of not getting access to sufficient healthcare for illnesses that may be preventable or treatable.
In the US, enormous steps have been made to provide low income and poor children health insurance. In 1997, the federal government established the State Children’s Health Insurance program (SCHIP) to assist families with health insurance when their incomes are too high to be covered by Medicaid and too low to afford private health insurance (Prince and Brocato,2006).According to Harrington and Estes, the US is estimated to have 21.9% of children living below the national poverty line.
There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in the attempt to reduce the rate of poverty in the US. Since children depend on parents/guardians for care, one way to endeavor in curtailing poverty and inadequate healthcare access includes the provision of educational programs and expansion of these programs to rural areas where there is desperate need for poverty eradication and better access to the utilization of healthcare services.
References
Estes, C.L. & Harrington, C., (2008). Health Policy Crisis and Reform in the U.S. Health Care Delivery System.Sandburry, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Prince, D., Pepper, K., & Brocato, K. (2006). The Importance of Making the Well-Being of Children in Poverty a Priority. Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(1), 21-28. doi:10.1007/s10643-006-0118-7
Gloria Ojo currently works as a Utilization Review Coordinator at a local hospital in MD and is currently pursuing a MSN-FNP degree. She has worked with the families who received Medicaid and has passion for quality healthcare for the underserved.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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| Anonymous61780 (columbia Maryland) |
on 27 Sep 2010 at 4:41 pm |
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| very nice article.The healthcare reform bill should hopefully make a difference in health accessibility for children and the poor |
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