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?

Children's Law Center's Health Access Project is a medical/ legal partnership between Children’s Law Center and Children’s National Medical Center. CLC lawyers work from offices within Children’s National Medical Center (CNMC) Children's Health Centers - adding lawyers to the multi-disciplinary team of medical experts who work to solve children’s medical problems.

As part of the medical team, CLC 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 CNMC pediatricians and nurses sometimes in the examining rooms themselves.

When rats or mold exacerbate a child’s asthma – CLC ensures 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, CLC advocates with the school system.

The only program of its kind in our region, CLC’s Health Access Project serves at-risk and impoverished children throughout DC – at the Children's Health Center at CNMC’s main hospital and at health centers in Adams Morgan in Northwest DC and at Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in Southeast DC. Collectively, these centers serve tens of thousands of children each year.

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