Kids' Health Blog

Dear first-time voters,

You’ve been hearing about the election for months. Maybe you’ve already registered to vote (if not, no worries, you can register at the polls). All that’s left is to wake up next Tuesday morning and head to your local polling place (need help finding it?)

That’s right, next Tuesday, Nov. 6, is Election Day. For many of you, this is the first time you’ll be able to vote. As a new voter, you can bring the issues that matter most to you and your family right into the booth. When you vote, you can be a voice for kids.

How does that work?

Making sure that elected officials help protect and promote children’s health means that we need to participate in the democratic process and speak up for the issues that matter to us. Voting is a critically important part of this advocacy. Your vote matters and the Children’s Advocacy and Health Policy department can help by keeping you up to date on some of the most important policies that affect kids’ health.

Why do young advocates matter?

Last year, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics saw more than 120,000 children and teens. That’s more than the entire city of Rochester. Unfortunately, the majority of them can’t vote. They can’t cast a ballot for the person they think will protect them, and you, the most. But you can.

You are the one with the experience, who knows what’s important to children who are sick or to the family of someone who is. Use this opportunity to advocate for all those who can’t advocate for themselves.

And every vote counts. In fact, during the 2010 election, three races in Minnesota were decided by fewer than 100 votes. If 100 Children’s patients were able to vote, it could have changed the result of the election.

So how do elections impact you?  

Every year, our elected officials consider laws that directly affect you. In the last five years, laws regarding seatbelt use, concussion safety and smoking in restaurants have all been passed at the state level. Legislation at the federal level is also extremely important: in 2012 a bill that would help address drug shortages was passed into law. The impact of this law on kids’ health is big: many kids at Children’s depend on those drugs for life-saving treatments.

In addition, legislation is often considered that impacts the funding we receive to train doctors and nurses that care for our kids, as well as our ability to offer all the great programs we currently provide like the Arts and Healing program.

The Children’s Advocacy and Health Policy department has great information on all the issues that affect Children’s Hospital, from funding to training our doctors and nurses to childhood obesity initiatives.

Get ready to vote

Now it’s time for you to go out and make a difference. Here are some resources that will hopefully make the voting process easy and seamless for you:

• Where do I vote? This information will help you locate your polling place.

• How do I register to vote? If you haven’t already done so, you can register to vote on Election Day.

• Where do I find information about candidates? The Minnesota Secretary of State website provides information on the candidates running for office in 2012 ballot.

We want to know how your first experience at the polls went! Tweet us @ChildrensMN or post on our Facebook page with a photo of you wearing your “I voted” sticker and let us know what it was like.

Continue to be a voice for children

After Election Day, you can stay engaged by joining Children’s Advocacy Network. We make being informed easy: You’ll get an alert whenever your involvement can make a difference! You’ll also get periodic updates on progress on issues and how your elected officials voted on measures before them.

Wishing you the best of luck,

The whole Advocacy and Health Policy team: Anna Youngerman, Kelly Wolfe, Katie Rojas-Jahn and Julia Miller

This is a post by Children’s Health Policy and Advocacy team. They’re nonpartisan and proudly serve as child health experts and as a resource for our elected officials. Follow Children’s Policy and Advocacy staff on Twitter.

Approximately 16,000 children will now be insured and have access to healthcare thanks to a finally implemented 2009 law. That is great news for kids and their families.

The healthcare expansion will cover working families who make between 150 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline(FPG) and will improve their access to care and preventative services. The new law eliminates the current four-month waiting period previously required and will allow every child under 18 to be eligible for MinnesotaCare, Minnesota’s subsidized insurance program for working families.

Those children under 200 percent of the FPG will be eligible for MinnesotaCare without premiums. Prior to the changes, a family of four earning less than $46,000 would have to pay premiums of up to $70 per child in order to participate in MinnesotaCare.

The new healthcare expansion is estimated to cost $11 million a year when fully implemented with the federal government covering half.

While this is certainly great news for the newly covered 16,000 children, officials estimate there are anywhere from 71,000 to 84,000 children who still lack health coverage. Minnesota is also the only state in the country that saw an increase in the number of children covered by health insurance last year, dropping in rankings to 27th in the country. According to the Annie Casey Foundation 2012 Kids Count Data Book, Minnesota also dropped from second to fifth in the nation in the overall well-being indicators for children.

While we applaud the new law and successes in getting more kids covered, it’s clear there is still a lot of work to do. Every child deserves a chance to be healthy.

To read the entire Kids Count Report, click here.

This is a post by Children’s Health Policy and Advocacy team. They’re nonpartisan and proudly serve as child health experts and as a resource for our elected officials. Follow Children’s Policy and Advocacy staff on Twitter.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).  In a 5-4 decision, the Court not only upheld the individual insurance mandate, but upheld a host of other provisions important to Children’s.

With ACA intact, private insurance reforms for children will remain, including: children with preexisting conditions will not be denied insurance coverage; children who undergo expensive procedures will not have to worry about annual and lifetime insurance caps; and young adults can stay on their parents’ insurance up to the age of 26.  The law also authorizes, though does not fund, the formation of demonstration Pediatric Accountable Care Organizations, which are designed to improve and streamline care.

It is still unclear at this time how the Court’s ruling will affect the temporary increases in Medicaid reimbursement rates for pediatricians and pediatric specialists, as well as maintenance of the current Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage for children through Sept. 30, 2019.

The most substantive change arising from this decision is around Medicaid.  Expansion of Medicaid has been limited, and is now largely left up to states to implement. States may maintain pre-expansion eligibility levels and receive current levels of funding, or they may comply with the federal expansion requirements and receive the corresponding federal funding. This decision will make it all the more important to make sure we protect Medicaid funding at a state level.

The following is a guest post from Kristen Spielman, the mother of a patient at the Woodwinds Clinic in Woodbury, MN.

Our son, Nathan, has had quite the journey since he was born 3 years ago. Many of you have walked a similar road. Just like us, you’ve cried, prayed, and rejoiced over your little one. I’d like to share our story with you and ask you to join us in helping Nathan, and other children with similar challenges, make even bigger strides than they are currently making in Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapies.

The day Nathan was born 3 years ago, the doctors told us that there was something different about him. His high palate, droopy eyelids, adducted thumbs, and perhaps most significant, his extremely low muscle tone, were all indicators that Nathan had a genetic syndrome. He has logged many hours with the special education department of our school district and has endured numerous blood draws and brace- and helmet-fitting appointments.

Most important to his development, Nathan has worked consistently in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy three times each week at Children’s Woodwinds Clinic in Woodbury, MN.

Last August, just before his third birthday, Nathan finally received a diagnosis. He has Multiminicore Disease, a rare genetic muscle condition in which his muscle cells will always only perform at a small percentage of normal function. As you can imagine, this affects EVERYTHING he does, from talking and chewing to gross motor skills. Nathan’s life will always be more difficult because of his disease, but his ability to communicate and perform daily tasks, quality of life, risk for falls, and movement is greatly improved through the therapies he learns and does at Children’s Woodwinds Clinic.

A unique opportunity has arisen at the Woodbury Clinic. An adjoining property right out the front door recently became available to Children’s. It was formerly the outdoor play area for a daycare. The current vision is for this area to be developed into a therapy playground.

For obvious reasons, one might think that such a playground would only be useful for Physical Therapy.  However, as the mom of a recipient of physical, occupational, and speech therapy, I can say with confidence, that it would benefit children receiving therapy in any of the 3 disciplines.

Megan Shepherd, a therapist at the Woodwinds Clinic, agrees. “A clinic playground would allow therapists to teach kids how to safely play and fully experience playgrounds at their neighborhood parks.”

The “work of play” is a child’s job. In my opinion, many of those “work hours” should be logged on a playground. Upon a child’s entrance to school, the playground will be an important learning space, second only to the classroom. Social skills, friendships, cooperation, and body awareness are only a few of the lessons that will be obtained there. How much better prepared will our children be for that environment if they know how to use a playground safely, effectively, and without fear?

Would you please join me in making it possible for this “Children’s” playground to be built?  Thank you for considering this opportunity. Your gift will bless Nathan, and in turn our family, and many other children and their families in countless ways for many years to come.

You can find more information about the project and make this playground a reality with a gift at GiveMN.

A recent rulilng by the Minnesota State Supreme Court requires the Minnesota Department of Health to destroy all newborn screening blood samples after 71 days. This is a troubling setback for a program that has succeeded at improving public health and saving the lives of children.

The blood samples will no longer be stored for possible analysis if a child or a sibling develops a health issue beyond those 71 days. They will also not be made available for use in important tests about health problems like immune deficiency disorders or public health dangers.

As a geneticist at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, I have seen firsthand how the newborn screening program saves lives. Our ability to detect rare and life threatening genetic conditions early on allows us to treat children proactively, in many cases saving their lives and allowing them to grow into healthy kids and adults. Storage of these samples is critical so we can go back when needed to these spots and test issues that emerge later in life or conditions involving relatives.

Here are just a few examples of why the availability of previously collected samples is important:

• Newborn screening spots may detect patients with rare inborn errors of metabolism. The registry allows physicians to use the blood spots to confirm diagnosis. This confirmation prevents delay of necessary care or repeated unnecessary testing.
• SIDS is the unexpected, sudden death of a child under the age of one. Typically a medical evaluation does not show an explainable cause of death. The newborn dried blood spot is the only available sample left to grieving parents and physicians striving to understand the cause of SIDS. If a second child in the family is diagnosed with a rare disorder, the family may request the blood spot to understand if the baby who passed away had the same disorder. Similarly, some infants with near SIDS present to an emergency room quite ill. If they are transfused with blood, the only way to get a repeat blood specimen that is untainted with anyone else’s blood products emergently is to obtain the newborn screening card.
• For a child who has failed the hearing test, it is important to know if they were born with an infection called cytomegalovirus (CMV). In most people, children and adults, CMV causes a cold. It is only if the mother had CMV during pregnancy that the infection may cause congenital hearing loss. When a child has recognized hearing loss within the first year of life, the only way to know definitively if there was a congenital CMV infection would be to check the newborn screening card. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know when the infection occurred, in utero vs. later after the baby was born.

I hope that Minnesota can act quickly to save this program, and retain its leadership in the area of health screening and public health research. At the very least, before we continue destroying potentially valuable blood spots, let’s have a clear discussion about the impact of this action.

Once a blood spot is destroyed, we can never recover the information contained in the sample. We owe it to our kids, their parents and our communities to pause, evaluate, and communicate a clear direction forward that will allow health professionals access to blood spots. I trust that an informed discussion will point us to the right decisions and will allow us to maintain and improve upon this extremely valuable program.

Nancy Mendelsohn, MD
Medical Director – Genetics Clinic
Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota