I’m a pediatrician in Michigan who created Rx Kids, one of the nation’s largest anti-poverty programs – here’s what I’ve learned about how medical schools can improve community health

The article highlights that poverty is one of the strongest and most lasting factors affecting health, even more than medical advances like vaccines or genome mapping.

A family’s income directly influences health outcomes, and poverty during pregnancy or early childhood can cause lifelong harm.

For example, it is linked to preterm births, low birth weight, maternal depression, infant death, and chronic illness.

Before a child is born, many families experience a sharp drop in income, which continues during the first year of the baby’s life.

Despite these clear connections, poverty is often noted in medical records but treated as a social issue outside the scope of medicine, rather than being addressed with the same urgency as other health conditions.