Quality Health Care for Children [6]

2 July, 2021

Health care is so much more than medical care, it encompasses all of an individual's life. To me, Quality of Care means:

- Looking at and evaluating the whole child and their family: social, emotional, nutritional, educational and environmental factors as well as growth, development, general health and health challenges

- Addressing health and family challenges in a compassionate, nonjudgmental fashion, with knowledge of community resources and financially accessible ways to address those challenges.

- Educating families on what is needed for their child to thrive, including nutritious food choices, recognizing signs of illness, providing clean water, avoidance of toxins, emotional support, and loving discipline. Praising and supporting them in their efforts to raise their children to the best of their abilities.

- Advocating for the child and their family with stakeholders, government, schools and any other group or individual who can affect child health and well being.

- Recognizing that children's health reflects the health of the whole community and the natural and built world they live in.

- Recognizing the role that local, district wide and national policies play in the health of children and families.

- Working to ensure that the world our children will grow up in will reflect how we treat the planet today. It is impossible to raise healthy children in an unhealthy planet.

- Eliminating environmental threats such as lead, toxic persistent chemicals, insecticides that threaten our pollinators, smog and small particulate air pollution, contaminated water, inadequate treatment and disposal of human waste, plastic pollution, garbage dumps, unsafe food, highly processed food, and of course global warming/climate change.

- Acknowledging the role that prejudice, hate and ignorance play in the social, emotional and physical health of our children.

- Advocating for the respectful and equal treatment of all persons regardless of race, nationality, social standing, income, gender, sexual orientation or identity, education, profession or lack thereof or any other characteristic that can put a human being in a category of "other".

- Educating those whose position allows them to make decisions that affect the current or future health of children on what the needs of these citizens of the future are and will be, and to inform them on how the policies they promote will affect the future of the planet and the society they live in.

- Ensuring that all health professionals are educated in the unique medical and health needs of children, and that they have the equipment, medications, vaccines and other tools necessary to provide children with the WHO standards of health care and injury and illness prevention. Providing these health professionals with continuing education in order for them to continue to provide optimal care.

- Supporting the needs of girls and women: their health, education, rights, nutrition, reproductive  health and family planning choices, and ensuring that these needs are not restricted by government, religious or other groups in power. Healthy children cannot be born to unhealthy women!

Kathleen Braico, MD

Medical Director

Double H Ranch

97 Hidden Valley Rd.

Lake Luzerne, NY 12846

CHIFA profile: Kathleen Braico is a retired General Pediatrician from upstate NY in the US. She is also the Medical Director for a Paul Newman camp for children with serious illnesses, Double H Ranch, in Lake Luzerne, NY. She is a board member of the Glens Falls Medical Mission and has gone on medical missions to Guatemala annually since 1998. She has also worked in Haiti in both in patient and out patient settings. She is an NRP regional instructor and has taught Neonatal Resuscitation, NRP, 3 times in Guatemala including an Instructor's course. She is currently a mentor in Helping Babies Breathe and has taught this course in Haiti. She is a member of The American Academy of Pediatrics Section on International Child Health. ktbraico AT aol.com