Outcome Tracking: Health

Study concludes children whose families have applied for welfare and children who are uninsured are at high risk medically and may require additional services to improve health outcomes.

CITATION:
Relationships Between Welfare Status, Health Insurance Status, and Health Care Among Children with Asthma.  American Journal of Public Health.  2002; 92 (9): 1446-1452.  PR Wood, LA Smith, D Romero, P Bradshaw, PH Wise & W Chavkin.

Study found that terminating or reducing welfare benefits by sanctions, or decreasing benefits because of changes in income or expenses, is associated with greater odds that young children will experience food insecurity and hospitalizations.

CITATION:
Welfare Reform and the Health of Young Children.  Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.  July 2002.  J Cook, et al.

ABSTRACT:

The United States is a highly mobile society, with family relocation rates double those of Great Britain and Germany. The objective of this study was to describe the impact of frequent family moves on reported rates of delay in growth or development, learning disorders, school failure and frequent behavioral problems in U.S. school-age children.

ABSTRACT:

With significant numbers of North Carolinians going without health care it is easy to pay less attention to reducing the environmental factors that result in poor health outcomes. The place you call home, whether a single room, apartment or owned home is the place where people spend the majority of their time. We have known for years that substandard housing can have a significant negative impact on children yet we have been extremely slow to aggressively fund efforts to remove these health factors from existing housing stock. Over the past few years, several research studies have calculated the economic cost of specific environmental risk factors on children. Cost figures range from $404 million in Montana to $1.87 billion in the State of Washington. Although the preceding studies focused on the impact of environmental risk factors on all children, this particular study focused on the impact of environmental-related risk factors on the health of NC children only living in substandard housing.

Article explores the role that legal advocacy can play in combating asthma rates in low-income communities of color.

CITATION:
The Asthma Crisis in Low-Income Communities of Color: Using the Law as a Tool for Promoting Public Health.  New York University Review of Law and Social Change.  2007.  Alina Das.

ABSTRACT:

This article examines the prevalence of asthma among New York City households from 10 racial/ethnic groups, and it explores whether differential exposure to potentially adverse housing and neighborhood conditions helps to mediate observed disparities. After adjusting for household size, Puerto Rican households exhibit the highest levels of asthma, followed by other Hispanic and black households. Mexican, Chinese, and Asian Indian households exhibit the lowest levels of asthma. Results from multilevel logistic regression models indicate that exposure to deteriorated housing conditions and perceptions of low social cohesion in the neighborhood significantly elevate the odds of asthma. Controlling for these conditions along with household characteristics reduces the disproportionately high levels of asthma among Puerto Rican and black households, although they remain significantly higher than the level among white households.

ABSTRACT:

Although asthma has emerged as a major contributor to disease and disability among US children, the burden of this disease is unevenly distributed within the population.  This article provides a brief overview of social-status variables that predict variations in asthma risks and social exposures, such as stress and violence, that are emerging as important risk factors.  The central focus of the article is on the distal social variables that have given rise to unhealthy residential environments in which the risk factors for asthma and other diseases are clustered.  Effective initiatives for the prevention and treatment of childhood asthma need to address these nonmedical determinants of the prevalence of asthma.

Dr. Robert Kahn's Keynote address delivered at the 2009 MLP Summit in Cleveland: Medical-Partnerships and Disparity Reduction: Are We Ready for Center Stage?

Dr. Kahn is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, the Medical Director of the Cincinnati Child Health-Law Partnership, and a member of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership's Medical Advisory Board.

Journal of Public Health Management and Practice article highlights medical-legal partnership as an intervention that improves health and reduces disparities. An excerpt:

The Medical-Legal Partnership model developed by the Boston Medical Center shows
promise for improving care and enhancing the management of disease...The addition of
lawyers to the medical team can promote health, prevent disease, and address barriers to
the effective care and management of illness by screening patients and their families for
social problems that can affect their medical care, assisting in the resolution of specific
social problems and enhancing the effectiveness of advocacy by the entire healthcare
team.

Moving Upstream: How Interventions That Address the Social Determinant of Health Can Improve Health and Reduce Disparities. Journal of Public Health Management Practices. November 2008; 14(6) Supplement: S8-S17. David R. Williams, et. al.

An instrument used by Tucson Family Advocacy Program to measure a client’s perceived stress before and after meeting with the legal team.