The 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (ECTC) provided families with six monthly cash transfer payments disbursed between July and December 2021, with the goal of alleviating financial strain during the COVID-19 pandemic. These payments reduced child poverty and food insufficiency and…

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVESRecent regulations require that hospitals screen families for health-related social needs (HRSNs), but many hospitals lack the resources and infrastructure to address these needs. Social workers (SWs) and community health workers (CHWs) play a critical role in…

Child health outcomes are often determined by factors outside of the health care system. At PolicyLab, our vision for health equity is that all children have the opportunity to achieve the best possible health outcomes, regardless of their race, ethnicity, preferred language,…

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVEAdultification is the process by which children, particularly Black girls, are perceived and treated as more mature or adult-like than their peers, often resulting in the denial of their childhood experiences and the imposition of adult expectations. This study…

Many pediatric health systems have recently implemented social needs screening and support programs in response to the link between social needs and children’s health outcomes, as well as mandates and incentives from payers and regulatory organizations. In developing processes for…

Objective: To identify barriers and facilitators to family-level comfort with health-related social needs (HRSN) data collection and documentation in the pediatric clinical setting.Study setting and design: This qualitative study was nested within a pragmatic randomized…

To create equitable programs and policies, the perspectives of populations who prefer a non-English language must be prioritized. However, guidelines are scarce for conducting language-inclusive clinical research, and limited transparency exists among multilingual studies about the…

Study objective: Menstrual inequity-unequal access to menstrual health care or products-negatively affects well-being in relation to the menstrual cycle, a construct known as menstrual health. Few studies have explored menstrual inequities among adolescent and young adult…

Nearly 1 in 5 families with children in the United States are food insecure. Hospitalization of a child can exacerbate food insecurity, both during the hospitalization and after discharge. Although some hospitals provide free or subsidized meals during hospitalization, few address food…

Importance: Childhood asthma is characterized by pervasive disparities, including 3-fold higher hospitalization rates and 7-fold higher death rates for Black children compared with White children. To address asthma disparities, one must intervene in all lived environments…