Nearly half of US children—40 million kids—are insured by Medicaid or children’s health insurance programs (CHIPs). In 2024, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services added a requirement that all hospitalized Medicaid patients be screened by a qualified clinician for structural drivers of health (SDOH), since health outcomes, particularly for children of color, are widely documented as compromised by social, historical, and fiscal neglect of parental leave and other US policies that support children. Despite the value of SDOH screening in improving US children’s health outcomes, a key problem is that few clinicians think SDOH screening is even feasible. This theme issue investigates clinical, ethical, and policy-level questions about how SDOH screening of children should be implemented and administered and how clinicians who care for children should integrate results of screening into their short- and long-term care plans.
Manuscript submission deadline has passed.
The AMA Journal of Ethics® invites original, English-language contributions for peer review consideration on the upcoming themes.