Pediatricians find link between cumulative hardships and health in low-income children

Pediatric researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC), in partnership with other Children's HealthWatch investigators in Minneapolis, Little Rock, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, have found that the cumulative effects of crowded and unstable housing and uncertain supplies of food and heat act together to decrease the chances of normal growth and development and good physical health among infants and toddlers. The findings, which appear in the April 12th online issue of the journal Pediatrics, bring attention to remediable conditions that influence the health, development and growth of America's youngest children. Poverty influences a child's well-being through multiple environmental stressors, the report says, but research and interventions often fail to take into account the remediable "material hardships" that may have direct physiologic impacts on children. These hardships include food insecurity (lack of access to enough healthful food for an active healthy life) housing insecurity (unstable or overcrowded housing) and energy insecurity (inability of families to afford consistent home heating or cooling).