Coronavirus impact on children extends beyond infection potential

BY KIMBERLY KRUPA
March 17, 2020

We’re not talking much about the impact of coronavirus on our children.

It’s true older adults and people with serious chronic medical conditions such as heart disease are at a higher risk of exposure to Covid-19. But most children are part of families, and in our community we must not forget the families most vulnerable to infection.

They are families dependent on hourly work stocking our shelves, making our meals, delivering our food, and cleaning our streets, hotels, stores, restaurants and hospitals.

They are families working on the front lines of emergency rooms and urgent care clinics, families caring for disabled children, families taking in older adults, families with foster children, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck, wondering where their next meal is coming from.

And they are grandparents responsible for the upbringing of their grandchildren under 18 years old. This is a particularly vulnerable type of family in our community, with 4,100 grandparents reporting sole custody in the most recent 2017 census five-year estimate.

Why are children in these families most at risk? Because pre-existing social vulnerabilities worsen during disasters. These vulnerabilities mirror the social determinants of health - things like food insecurity, housing insecurity, neighborhood safety, depression, suicide, alcoholism and drug overdose.

Read more in Dr. Kimberly Krupa’s Pensacola News Journal Guestview column published on March 17, 2020.