Highlighting a New Yorker Article: The Poverty Clinic by Paul Tough

As many of you know, I am an avid New Yorker reader. It's just so full of interesting articles that are well-written and such clever cartoons that receiving it is really a high point of my week. As I've been knee-deep in my own writing for my recently submitted scholarly paper (Uncovering the Common Grounds of TennCare Stakeholders: A Complete Timeline from 1935-2010 with the Stakeholders' Perspectives) that I haven't posted in awhile and that I have become consumed with health care policy. In the March 21, 2011, edition of The New Yorker, Paul Tough wrote about Dr. Nadine Burke and her Bayview health clinic in San Francisco. She is busy working on research proving a relationship between a stressful childhood and later physiological problems such as heart disease, cancer, asthma, diabetes, etc. One study has been done, and it showed a causal relationship between diseases with adult-onset with higher rates of childhood exposure to violence, sexual abuse, divorce, drug exposure, and neglect. However, that study was discounted by the medical community, as a whole, because of its retrospective nature. Thus, Dr. Burke along with other researchers and a group in New Zealand are completing prospective research on any possible causal relationship.

If such a relationship is proven, it raises the bar for society to protect its children. It would also begin to question, how much violence, abuse, neglect, etc., are we, as a society, willing to accept or live with, knowing that the effects go beyond perpetuating the cycle of poverty and imprisonment and extend to massive health care costs that were preventable. Balanced in with the desire to control future costs and preserve future health of our citizens is the constitutional right to parent and raise children. Would these potential outcomes further blur the line of what is acceptable and what is not? I can see a two-tier system developing to where those who are on government-funding now would be under higher scrutiny than those wealthy enough to provide for themselves and their families because the children of needy families will likely grow up to also be needy themselves. It would be like a justified big brother system: because I'm paying for you now, and I'm going to be paying for you in the future, you've got to really toe the proverbial line so I can minimize your costs to me in the future. I think there would need to be a strong stand to protect constitutional rights for those receiving aid while also trying to put the best interest of the child first.

I recommend all read Tough's article (and have a little chuckle about the cartoon on p.30).