Title
Poverty and its Impact on Children’s Health
By Shelby Hart
Research in the 21st Century
Spring Quarter
2008
Introduction
How is children’s health affected when there is a lack of affordable health care due to living in poverty? All over the
Topic Analysis
Academic Disciplines
Psychology
Sociology
Health
Medicine
Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Minorities
Health
Medicine
Social Science
Homelessness
Poverty
Key Words & Search Terms
The following are words that I used or may have used to search. I used them alone and in different combinations.
Poverty
Health care
Children’s health
Minority health
Affordable health care
Homelessness and children’s health
Low income
Databases & Periodical Indexes
The most important and most useful databases that I used in my searches are:
ProQuest
Google
Description of my experience identifying subject headings and key words
When trying to research my topic, I started with a very broad and basic search, “Poverty”, I then went through some of the results, and used some of the words that I found in the results that seemed relevant. After my initial search, I added words like “children” and “children’s health”, and eventually was led to use “minority”. The basic search for “poverty” yielded a lot of information and articles, but taking simple steps and trying to narrow the results led to the best results.
Best Reference Sources
Organizations
http://www.aap.org/
National Headquarters:
The
141 Northwest Point Boulevard
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007-1098
847/434-4000
847/434-8000 (Fax)
The
Statistical Information
“What are poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines?” Institute for Research on Poverty. 4 Sept 2007. University of Wisconsin-Madison. 29 May 2008 <http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm>
The Institute for Research on Poverty gives an up to date look at what is really considered the guidelines to determine if a family is living in poverty or not. This information important to my topic because it lays the ground work for what classifies as poverty.
“Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates”
The U.S. Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program gives annual estimates for all states, counties, and school districts on poverty and income levels. It relates to my topic by showing how many people across the
Encyclopedia & Specialized Reference Tools
Gulli, Laith, Mallory, Nicole, and Wells, Ken. “Minority Health.”Gale Encyclopedia of Children’s Health: Infancy through Adolescence. Ed. Krapp, Kristine and Wilson, Jeffrey. Vol. 3.
Laith Gulli, Nicole Mallory, and Ken Wells offer a great amount of information on “Minority Health” and almost everything that goes with it. The touch on subjects like infant mortality rates to Parent concerns. Anyone that wants to know about the health aspects of any minority group should read this article. All three authors support the information with extensive references to periodicals, websites and organizations.
Anooshian, Linda J. "Poverty." Child Development. Ed. Neil J. Salkind.
After doing a little investigation, I found out that Linda J. Anooshian is a psychologist at
Best Books
Murray, Charles A. In our hands: a plan to replace the welfare state.
Charles Murray is arguing that the welfare program can’t survive and thinks that it has to change. His proposal talks of taking out all transfer programs (Medicare, welfare, Medicaid and others) and instead of people receiving these government programs, they (21 and over) would get an annual grant of $10,000 for life. Charles Murray thinks that his plan would cause people to become personally accountable for them, and give them the power to live their own lives. They would be more able to pay for their own healthcare and save money for retirement. He also thinks this would save $1 trillion of the government’s money by the year 2008. Obviously his plan wasn’t put into affect, but it shows that people are trying to change things.
Sanders, Rickie and Mattson, Mark T. Growing up in
Rickie Sanders and Mark Mattson put this book together using almost 300 maps, graphs, and tables to show different aspects of children in
Best Periodical Articles
Anonymous. "Public Health; Extra cash from government program linked to better child development.” Drug Week 21 Mar 2008. ProQuest. Kirk Library,
This article talks about research that was done, giving families of poverty a sum of money, and then talks about the outcome of the children who received more money than the group that received less. According to the study the children that lived in poverty that got extra cash from a government program scored higher on motor, cognitive, and language tests, were less likely to be overweight and were even taller than the children’s families that got less money. The author touches on this study many times throughout the article, I’m assuming to get the point across that families that have the means to live comfortably have children that are healthier. I found this article on ProQuest using the keywords “children’s health AND poverty”.
Cousineau, Michael R., Rice, Kyoko, and Stevens, Gregory D. “Children's Health Initiatives in
In counties throughout
C Eugene Steuerle, Randall R Bovbjerg. "Health and Budget Reform As Handmaidens.” Health Affairs 27.3 (2008): 633-644. Health Module. ProQuest. Kirk Library,
Steuerle and Bovbjerg do a good job of discussing the problems involved in the health insurance of this country. They touch on several aspects of it, including how probably every president will have to look at a new “budget-driven reforms in health policy” as a major priority. Many times the facts that budget flaws are linked to health care problems.
Best Internet Sources
“Health Care for the Homeless.” American Medical Student Association. 2008. AMSA. 13 May 2008 <http://www.amsa.org/programs/gpit/homeless.cfm>
Although I was unable to find a specific author for this website, I found quite a bit of good information pertaining to my topic. The American Medical Student Association is focused on giving the best and most accurate information on health and health care. The “Health Care for the Homeless” part of their website is basically a project that addresses some problems of the homeless, health problems is one. Medical Students contribute to the homeless health care network by working with clinics, forming their own clinics, and starting outreach programs. The information on this website is focused more for medical students, but can benefit anyone willing to read it. There are suggestions on how to find the best information on homelessness on the page, along with information that deals directly with homelessness and poverty such as diseases, causes of, and ways students can be more involved.
Insure Kids Now! is a nationwide campaign that is helping get uninsured kids, birth to age 18 find free or low cost health care. The campaign is sponsored by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and is a great tool for families that need affordable health care for their children. There is a link to help families find health care in their state, and other resources that may help parents. There is another link that gives you the opportunity to spread the word about their campaign. They stress that even if the parent is working, their children will most likely be eligible for a program. They even have a Spanish text option for those that may not speak English. They would probably benefit more if they had other languages, but overall this website is the most useful of all others that I have found.
Best Non-Print / Alternative Sources
Poverty
29 May 2008.
This video shows what people are missing about poverty. How people live and what should and could be done. The author is definitely trying to open eyes about the poverty situation in
My Research Experience
When I first picked my topic and began to research it, I realized that I really needed to narrow it down, a lot. My searches yielded good results, but it was just way too much to go through, and was far too broad to use. The more I tried to narrow it down, the more confused I got on the process as a whole. Just in the last couple of weeks I finally decided to stay with my current topic, and after refining my searches and trying out different key words and subjects I started to get the right amount of results. However, I also realized that no matter how “narrowed down” I got my topic; I still ended up with the same results, just fewer. Finding current information on my topic was really hard; I found current information on poverty in other countries, but not many in the
I found the most results while using ProQuest and Google U.S. Government. Using the information I found was a bit of a puzzle, a lot of the stuff that I found on ProQuest was only abstract articles, or were dealing with poverty in other countries. I think I probably would have had a much easier time with a topic focusing on another country. Using keywords was also a little stressful, although I did find good information, the only way I found it was using specific search terms, and even then I had to dig through to try to get the information that I needed.
Compared to a regular in library search the internet has made it possible for me to do extensive research on my topic that I wouldn’t have been able to before. Searching in a library for all of these different materials would have taken more time than I had to spare. There is one big drawback to conducting searches online, a person has to really be careful that the information that you find is from a credible sources. Aside from that drawback, there is an almost unending wealth of information out there.
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