Greatest threat to health of children is poverty

Barbara Fitzgerald, Special to The Vancouver Sun 

Greatest threat to health of children is poverty

Barbara Fitzgerald is a developmental pediatrician who has worked with children in the inner city for 16 years.



There is a devastating health condition that affects one in 10 children in our province: 87,000 children. It causes injury, illness, school failure and premature death. As a society, we must decide if it is a health condition we want to treat.

The condition is child poverty.

There is no other health condition in children that we discriminate against. Children are routinely provided treatment and support for conditions for which there is very little hope of survival. Why is this one different? One reason is we designate it as solely a social problem, or an educational system problem. In doing so, we diminish the urgency and the significance of it. It becomes a discussion about how some schools don’t have smart boards and some do. Let’s put child poverty into the domain where it belongs, child health. The economic advantage a child has determines to a large extent, her physical, emotional and mental health in the same way neonatal intensive care determines the outcome of premature babies. We get complacent when we stop thinking of poverty as a health problem and think of it as “just a social problem.”

When I met Brenda, the mother of two girls who are my patients, she had little food, no beds and no books because of a recent bedbug infestation. The girls were referred to me for academic delay. Brenda is a proud and independent woman who has overcome a lifetime of hardship. She, like most mothers I meet in my practice, asks for little. She was afraid to ask a social worker for help in case her children were taken away. She loves her girls but what real chance do they have? Without nutritious food to eat or beds to sleep in, how will they arrive at school ready to learn? How will their brains grow properly? If their mother is chronically stressed not knowing if they will have food that day, how can she nurture and support them? It doesn’t take a doctor or a teacher to tell you the chance these girls will graduate from high school is remote. Brenda is now supported by volunteers from a charity I started, Mom to Mom, and she is doing well, but systemic change needs to happen to make a difference for all children.

Poor parents tend to get blamed for their children’s difficulties. In my work, I see parents being very resourceful in the face of incredible challenges. How did we allow our own prejudices to influence the treatment of children’s health? We have all made mistakes as parents. When your child presents with an asthma attack, we don’t ask if you smoke and then decide not to treat him because you have contributed to the illness. We make (often incorrect) assumptions about the choices that parents who live in poverty have made and then justify not treating the condition that most impacts their children ­— poverty.

If we want the next generation of children to graduate from high school and contribute to the economy, then we know what to do. The research is very clear that investing in children makes economic sense. Every dollar spent supporting children when they are young saves dollars when they are adults. But why do we even have to make an economic argument? When we care for a child with Down syndrome, we don’t debate the cost of treatment against the likely future tax contribution that child will make.

Child poverty is the health issue of our time. As a pediatrician, I am not prepared to stand by and watch another generation of children suffer with a treatable condition. We eradicated polio in Canada because we could; it’s time to eradicate child poverty. The cure is a living wage for families, affordable and safe child care and housing, and services for children with special needs in schools. All of this is clearly outlined in the framework developed by First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

Let’s elect a government that will work to keep our children healthy. Let’s truly adopt universal health care and give all children what they need to be happy and healthy.

Barbara Fitzgerald is a developmental pediatrician who has worked with children in the inner city for 16 years. She is a clinical associate professor at UBC and president of Mom to Mom Child Poverty Initiative Society (www.m2mcharity.ca).

