Improve Children's Health

Did you know?

• Rats, mold and cockroaches exacerbate children’s asthma – and cause repeated emergency room visits for hundreds of low-income children in DC.
• Children living in poverty are twice as likely to have poor health than their wealthier counterparts.
• Societal and environmental factors — unsafe housing, inadequate education, low income, domestic violence and health insurance problems — contribute to negative health outcomes for poor children.
   

How Does Children’s Law Center Improve Children’s Health?

We help more than 2,000 children each year, more than 600 through our medical-legal partnership, where lawyers work side-by-side with pediatricians in clinics that treat low income families. Together, the doctors and lawyers find legal remedies to health problems that get in the way of a child's success. Because this partnership is at the center of the work, we call this program Healthy Together (formerly, the Health Access Project). Our lawyers currently work in Children's National Medical Center at the main hospital and 3 children's health centers, as well as Mary's Center.

As part of the medical team, our staff lawyers win the legal and administrative battles necessary to improve a child’s health when pills or surgery are not enough. We work collaboratively with pediatricians and nurses sometimes in the examining rooms themselves.

When rats or mold exacerbate a child’s asthma – we ensure that her housing conditions are improved. When a school fails to provide a learning disabled child with the special tutoring he needs to learn to read, we advocate with the school system.

Learn how CLC’s advocacy transformed the life of Kyle, a boy who was being deprived of an education because he uses a wheelchair.