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The following excerpt is from an op-ed that first appeared in The Philadelphia Citizen on August 30th, 2024.
During a recent appointment with their pediatrician, a West Philadelphia parent shared how the family’s electricity had been shut off, endangering their children’s health just before an upcoming heat wave. The physician quickly referred this family to our clinic’s Medical Financial Partnership (MFP), where our navigator used a local nonprofit’s screening tool to learn that the family was eligible for 15 public benefits, including an electricity subsidy. With support from our team, the family has already applied for five of those benefits — getting closer to accessing the help they need to keep their children healthy.
Stories like this are common for families seeking care at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and across Philadelphia. Through a partnership with Philadelphia’s Benefits Data Trust (BDT), our team could use a BDT screening tool that helped families learn if they are eligible for 29 public benefits, and support them through the application process, ensuring they receive the support they deserve.
Unfortunately, BDT ceased operations on August 24. This sudden closure represents a huge loss for Philadelphia citizens and the fight for better health and less poverty.
Since its inception in 2005, BDT has connected over one million households in Philadelphia to more than $7.5 billion in public benefits. Connecting families to public programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Low-Income Heat and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) can improve their health and well-being. Studies have found that enrollment in these programs comes with improved self-reported health, less depression and anxiety, fewer low birth weight and preterm births, and less child injury, child maltreatment, and food insecurity.
We can’t let the closure of BDT set us back. Together, health systems and community groups here and across the state must come together to promote child and family health and help families get the government benefits they need.
Government benefits can be hard for families to access due to the big bureaucratic burdens they impose…
Read the entire op-ed here.
Authors
Madeline DeMarco, MPP
Resource Coordinator, CHOP PolicyLab and Clinical Futures, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Aditi Vasan, MD, MSHP
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine; Pediatric Hospitalist, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
George Dalembert, MD, MSHP
Assistant Professor, Clinical Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine
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