AAP Voices Blog

Saturday mornings during the summer are my favorite time. The kids are old enough to know not to wake me, and when I do open my eyes, I can relax and reflect on my week.

Rolling over to check my phone in late August, my news feed alerted me that COVID-19 had claimed its youngest victim in Florida. A 6-year-old girl had lost her life in the Tampa area. The headline sent a chill through me, because, as a community pediatrician and a mom of four, I could begin to imagine what her mother and her pediatrician were going through.

On Facebook, there was an alert on our neighborhood page to a GoFundMe titled “An Angel has Earned her Wings.” It was shared by a teacher from the school the girl attended. The school is one where almost all the children get free or reduced-cost lunches. Many of the children come from families of migrant workers who toil on the strawberry farms in our county and then move to other parts of the country to work the fields there. These kids may go to three different schools during their school year. WiFi and laptops are scarce.  

The GoFundMe account was started to raise money for the little girl’s funeral arrangements. The mother and daughter had immigrated from Mexico, searching for a better life. The mom revealed that her daughter had other medical conditions, but she was positive for COVID-19 at the time of her death. I imagined all the trials and tribulations this family went through to come to this country, seeking a better life, working hard, and now burying their daughter because of a worldwide pandemic.  

“I vote for children because their lives depend on it. Not just their physical lives, but their emotional lives as well.”

I am the child of immigrant parents, but my immigrant story is very different. My parents came to this country from Guyana and Jamaica searching for a better life for themselves and their young family. The immigration laws in the late 1960s and early ’70s encouraged “highly skilled” workers from abroad to come to the U.S., in particular physicians to help fill the void of physicians being shipped off to the Vietnam War. They needed surgeons, and my father, an aspiring surgeon, saw the opportunity to get great training.

After my mother graduated from medical school, she joined him here. I was born here, and by law, I am an American citizen. Because of my parents’ position and education, I was blessed to go to some of the best schools and pursue my dreams of becoming a physician. I have had privileges that this little girl from Mexico and many others will never have, but all of our families came to this country with the same hope for a better life.

Growing up in New York, the Statue of Liberty was a symbol of open arms, freedom, and the promise of a better life, and I saw her image everywhere. Inscribed at her base are the words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” These words are the promise of America to immigrants coming to our shores.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the glaring divide between the haves and have-nots in this nation. COVID-19 has affected and devastated Black, Latinx and Indigenous American communities all over this country. Their children are being hospitalized due to COVID-19 at five (Blacks) and eight (Latinx) times the rate of white children. They are dying at higher rates.

This is not due to their race but because their parents are often front-line and essential workers. They are the bus drivers, the meatpacking factory workers, the farm workers, the teachers, the hospital staff, the hospitality workers. These workers are the people that keep our country humming at the best and worst of times. They live in multigenerational homes so there are people to take care of the kids while they are at work. They aren’t able to work from home, so they are exposed to COVID-19 and then expose it to their children.

In addition to living in fear of getting COVID-19, millions across the country face being laid off, losing their health insurance, being evicted, and enduring hunger because of this pandemic.

This did not have to happen. We as a nation have the power to change things to protect the lives of our children and our children’s children. Our patients deserve better from this country. They deserve better schools, better health care, better insurance coverage, better food, better water, better environment, better WiFi, better infrastructure. I vote for children because their lives depend on it. Not just their physical lives, but their emotional lives as well.

The AAP has a Vote Kids campaign with resources that we, as pediatricians, can use in these crucial final days before Election Day. You can also encourage your patients’ parents and caregivers to vote and urge them to study the most important issues that affect children.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is the promise of this country. Let us all vote to live up to that promise.