Candidate Questions for the 2024 Election

Since the COVID-19 public health emergency ended last year, millions of children have lost their health care coverage through programs like Medicaid and CHIP. What is your plan to protect children’s health coverage and ensure they can access the care and services they need to be healthy?  

In 2020, firearm violence overtook motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for children in the United States. What is your plan to end the epidemic of firearm injuries and deaths among children and teens in our country? 

As a pediatrician, one of the top questions families ask me about is social media and its impact on their children’s mental health. What is your plan to make sure kids are able to benefit from a digital environment that is safe and healthy for them? 

11 million children live in poverty in this country, and its impacts on children’s health can be severe and lifelong. How do you propose to help lift children and families out of poverty? 

Nearly three years ago, pediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatrists and children’s hospitals declared a national emergency in youth mental health. While there has been some policy progress, there is so much more we need to do to support young people. How do you plan to address and support youth mental health?  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our nation saw a drop in vaccine rates among children. While vaccine rates have increased since the end of the pandemic, we still have not quite reached pre-pandemic vaccine levels. What will you do to help promote vaccines and ensure that our community is protected against measles, polio, whooping cough and other infectious diseases? 

Children are uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. As a pediatrician, I see these impacts in my practice daily—a child’s asthma may be harder to manage because of poor air quality, camps keep kids indoors because of increasingly hot temperatures, and wildfires and hurricanes are becoming more common and more severe, impacting housing and health. What would your administration do to protect children from the health effects of climate change? 

Children are 25% of the U.S. population and 100% of the future. How do you propose to provide for the future by investing in children?