Funding for Community Health Workers Authorized in Consolidated Appropriations Act – How could this help children and families? 

We’ve written about several of the exciting health provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 that was signed into law in December here on Say Ahhh!: to recap, Joan Alker wrote about the permanent mandatory 12-month continuous eligibility requirement and other important provisions, Tricia Brooks detailed the new guardrails and transparency requirements as states […]

Decline in Routine Childhood Vaccinations Puts Children, Families and Communities at Risk of Outbreak

In May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that provider orders for non-influenza childhood vaccines through the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program had decreased by a total of about 11.7 million doses during the COVID-19 pandemic. These numbers are shockingly high, but likely underestimate the total number of missed doses. (The […]

Documenting the Harm of the Decline in Pediatric Visits: A Survey and Report from the Institute for Child Success

The Commonwealth Fund continues to track changes in outpatient visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, with October 2020 data showing outpatient care generally returning to pre-pandemic levels after the sharp decline of nearly 60 percent in late April. But the data also show that visits for younger children remain substantially below the prepandemic baseline and visits […]