You may have noticed the “Speak Now for Children” button on the left-hand side of my blog.  Don’t feel bad if you didn’t; I just put it up yesterday when I found out about it from Heather Spohr.  But I got really excited and wanted to share this info with you.

Speak Now for Kids is a national online campaign(spearheaded by the NACH and joined by the the AAP and several other great organizations)  which is designed to tell Congress and the Obama Administration what children need in health care. On their website www.speaknowforkids.org, they are asking people to submit health care stories, photos or video messages and tell legislators your priorities for reforming health care for children.  They have also come up with many ways for you as individuals to spread the word. You can go here to enter your information and leave a comment, post a picture or send a video clip. (Just make sure you have your statement, picture or video clip ready to go when you fill out your info!  It doesn’t appear that you can go back and add that party later.)  They even have some information designed specifically for physicians.

Most of my readers are parents.  And even if you have healthy children with insurance, you cannot ignore this.  Do you know that there are 8.8 MILLION uninsured children in the United States? And even with insurance, children receive only 68 percent of recommended care for acute medical problems, 53 percent of recommended care for chronic medical conditions, and 41 percent of recommended preventive care. Children with asthma receive only 46 percent of the care they need. (All of this information is from NACH and Speak Now for Kids.)  Lives are at stake here, people.  Little bitty lives that are worth a whole lot!

So I’m asking you to please take a few moments of your time to visit the Speak Now for Kids website, which launches today.

Thank you for taking the time to read this…now go submit your ideas!

*I did see that MCG(where Marshall did med school and his pediatric residency) and CHOA are two of the 75 hospitals that have joined the campaign.  Yay, Georgia!*