During my time at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I had an opportunity to experience various aspects of public health.
There is one particular experience I enjoyed the most.
I enjoyed it so much that I added it as an emphasis to my concentration of maternal and child health. That emphasis was in the area of children with special health-care needs.
I spent a year coordinating work groups with parents and providers, and even with some of those children with special needs, attempting to ensure that these children with extraordinary medical needs, disabilities and chronic conditions had access to quality health care.
So what makes these children so different you may ask?
Some of these children may have spina bifida, autism, cerebral palsy or mental retardation among other health conditions.
This article was inspired by a woman in my church I have known for years. She is a mother of three, one of whom is autistic.
She brought the subject to my attention one Sunday, and I realized I had forsaken an emphasis of my education that I loved.
For that reason, I will take the next few months to focus on children with special health-care needs as well as the resources available to them.
According to the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs, Mississippi reported 15 percent of children with special health-care needs from 2005 to 2006.
It also reported that 12.1 percent of these children were between 0 and 5 years old, while 17.4 percent and 15.8 percent were between the ages of 6 and 11 and 12 and 17, respectively.
Approximately 17 percent of the state's male population has a special health-care need, versus 13 percent of the female population.
A large proportion of this population lives below the federal poverty level.
According to the national survey, an estimated 24.2 percent of children in Mississippi has a condition that affects their activities regularly, always, or significantly. Approximately 17.1 percent of these children are absent from school at least 11 or more days per year.
The survey reports that from 2005 to 2006, around 11.9 percent of children with special health-care needs went without insurance at some point during the year, while 4.2 percent had no insurance at the time the survey was conducted.
Approximately 34.7 percent of those currently insured felt their insurance was inadequate.
These families often experience a number of issues when dealing with a child with a special health care need.
Health-care services are often inadequate. Families often face difficulty getting needed referrals, which often leads them to seek help from emergency rooms.
These families lack the privilege of having a personal doctor or nurse, and most importantly, family-centered care.
Having a child with a special health-care need can be a great financial burden because these families often have to pay at least $1,000 or more out-of-pocket for medical expenses per child.
Most families have to dedicate at least 11 hours per week to coordinating the child’s health care, which may ultimately lead to a parent giving up employment or losing their jobs if they do not have support systems outside the family.
As you can see, it is hard taking care of a child with a special health-care need. So hats off to the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and other support systems for these children as these people strive to ensure that their children attain maximum development mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Just know that these children are not their only condition, but they are individuals who live, laugh and love just as we all do.
For more information on children with special health-care needs, you may visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site at www.cdc.gov or the Maternal and Child Health Bureau at mchb.hrsa.gov.
You also may contact the Early Intervention Program (First Steps) at the Mississippi State Department of Health at (800) 451-3903.
- Courtney Young, MPH, a native of Greenwood, is currently working on her master’s degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. She is a first-year nursing student in the Family Nurse Practitioner program.
