Child Poverty and Health

Posted on June 26, 2015 by admin

• How to cut the cost of child poverty, to the health of kids and the community, By Brie Zeltner, June 16, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Cleveland is awash in poor, sick kids. Poverty and poor health go hand in hand, and they’re costly — to the children and the rest of the community.  Cleveland’s child poverty rate is 54 percent, second in the U.S. only to Detroit’s.  Poor kids face assaults to their health that begin in the womb, and can last a lifetime. Many never make it past their first year; in some East Side neighborhoods the infant mortality rate exceeds Third World levels.  They are more likely to be born premature; to die young; to be poisoned by lead, to suffer from asthma, diabetes and obesity…”
• Cost-effective way to prevent chronic asthma in kids has Cleveland roots, By Brie Zeltner, June 17, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “For decades, some of Cleveland’s most vulnerable children — those with severe, chronic asthma — have been caught in an expensive cycle of fear and frustration.  They live in substandard housing surrounded by mold, cockroaches, dust, lead and secondhand smoke. They have expensive inhalers, drugs and breathing machines, but still they suffer potentially lethal asthma attacks…”
• Home visits clean up triggers for kids with chronic asthma, By Brie Zeltner, June 17, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “It’s a cold day in mid-December, and Akbar Tyler stands in the kitchen of a two-story colonial in the West Side Brooklyn Centre neighborhood. He points to a line of white powder along the counter and floorboards.  Roach poison. The oven is on, its door hanging open, in an attempt to heat the drafty room. ‘This is a problem,’ he says. Tyler is the healthy housing manager at Environmental Health Watch, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Cleveland. For the past 15 years, he and a team from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals, as well as local housing officials have used federal funding to help clean up breathing hazards in Cleveland homes…”