In his first budget address to state lawmakers last week, Gov. Josh Shapiro said that “for the first time” the commonwealth is going to put “real resources” into studying the root causes of Pennsylvania’s high maternal mortality rate, which is three times higher for Black women. A 2022 report from the Pennsylvania Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which reviews […]
Early Care and Education in Governor Shapiro’s 2023-24 State Budget Proposal
HARRISBURG, PA (March 7, 2023) – Today, the principal partners of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA), a statewide coalition of advocates focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five, issued the following statements regarding Governor Josh Shapiro’s 2023-24 state budget proposal. ELPA operates four issue-based advocacy campaigns: Start Strong PA, Pre-K for PA, Childhood […]
Resuming Medicaid case checks confronts 3.6M in Pennsylvania
The federal government’s pandemic-era prohibition against kicking people off Medicaid is ending, meaning that hundreds of thousands of people in Pennsylvania face losing the free health insurance in the coming year. The Harrisburg-based nonprofit Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children wants the Shapiro administration to guarantee that children up to 21 can keep their coverage for another […]
A report on Pennsylvania’s program for Women, Infants and Children finds there are barriers to participation for eligible families
From 2018 to 2022, there was a roughly 25% decline in participation in Pennsylvania’s WIC program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. WIC helps low income pregnant and breastfeeding parents and children under age five afford food. A report from Thriving PA looked into the barriers that are keeping people from participating […]
Oregon pioneers continuous Medicaid coverage for kids through their 6th birthday
Oregon is the first state in the nation that will allow kids with Medicaid coverage to remain continuously enrolled through their 6th birthday. This means low-income families won’t have to re-enroll every year to keep their kids insured. Gov. Kate Brown made the announcement Wednesday morning, alongside federal officials from the Centers for Medicare & […]
POV: Overturning Roe v. Wade Will Worsen Health Inequities in All Reproductive Care
The recent national conversation has appropriately focused on the devastating impact of limiting or banning access to abortion care. Conservative estimates show that in the year following the overturning of Roe, at least 75,000 people who want, but cannot get, abortions will give birth instead. And these people are facing higher than ever—and rising—pregnancy-related mortality rates. […]
‘Lead-Free Promise’ launches new Pa. initiative
PENNSYLVANIA (WHTM) — The Lead-Free Promise is launching the #paleadfree legislative promise initiative. It is a coalition of more than 53 organizations. Their goal is that each of the 203 state house members are committed to protecting Pennsylvania children by taking a stand against lead paint poisoning. The commonwealth continues to lead the nation in […]
Lancaster City Council hears update on lead hazard ordinance to improve protection for children
When: Lancaster City Council meeting, April 26, held in council chambers and streamed online. What happened: The city is updating the lead poisoning prevention and lead hazard control ordinance to strengthen the response time to children with elevated blood levels as well as expanding requirements for lead safety in homes built before 1978. The new ordinance will […]
Under a new threshold, the number of Pa. children with high lead levels is expected to almost double
Data from the 2020 Childhood Lead Surveillance report from the Pennsylvania DOH showed the rate of children with elevated blood lead levels to be about 4.65. This is a rate two times higher than children poisoned in Flint, Mich., at the peak of the city’s crisis, according to a recent statement from the Lead-Free Promise […]
Half of US adults exposed to harmful lead levels as kids
Over 170 million U.S.-born people who were adults in 2015 were exposed to harmful levels of lead as children, a new study estimates. Researchers used blood-lead level, census and leaded gasoline consumption data to examine how widespread early childhood lead exposure was in the country between 1940 and 2015. In a paper published in the Proceedings […]
