Does Your Neighborhood Doom You To An Early Death?
By Kelli Dunham
For almost a decade I worked as a nurse home visitor in Philadelphia with a well-regarded program that pairs nurses with first-time moms. In the morning I would put on my backpack full of child-development accoutrements, grab my baby scale and jump on the 23 bus.
In the Center City/downtown area where I lived, life expectancy was 78 to 80 years. When I got off the 23 bus less than 15 minutes later in lower North Philadelphia, it was less than 70 years.
If you didn’t mind exposure to snow, sleet, rain, beating sun and the occasional family pet slobbering a little bit on your paperwork, the job itself was a gem among nursing jobs. We got to spend time, substantial time, with patients (we called them clients), and got to witness first-time parents work what seemed like miracles.
Partnering with young moms meant I had the enormous privilege of witnessing many first breaths, first steps. I also got to attend more than my fair share of high school graduation ceremonies, rites of passage that my clients fought hard to reach.
T.S. was one 16-year-old who as she said “was not going to become a statistic.” She went into labor early and her baby was extremely premature, born 15 weeks early. Although it would be months before the baby could eat by mouth, T.S., who I’m identifying by her initials because she was a minor, immediately began pumping her breast milk and saving it in the hospital’s NICU freezer.
She stayed with the baby every minute they allowed her to during her immediate postpartum period, and when she returned to school six weeks after the baby was born, she continued to pump during the school day, visiting the nurse’s office between classes.
When school dismissed at 3:15, she rode the bus to the Center City hospital where her baby was in the NICU and stayed until after 10 each night. If I stopped by on my way home, I’d often find her almost asleep, holding her baby in her arms while poring over a textbook propped on a tray table.
At six months, her baby was strong and healthy enough to leave the hospital. T.S. continued her junior year.
Three weeks before she was to graduate from high school, I got a call from T.S. She was crying.
“My house has lead in it and now my baby has lead poisoning.” I waited for her to continue. “I did everything I could do to make my baby healthy and now our house poisoned my baby!”
(More from Shots: Health News from NPR)
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