NASEM Releases New Report on Impacts of COVID-19 on Youth and Families
A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that greater national focus and investment are necessary to address the critical needs that the COVID-19 pandemic caused or exacerbated for children and families, especially those in marginalized communities. The report recommends strengthening and expanding critical safety net programs, including Medicaid, paid family leave and sick leave, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
The report examines the substantial toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on the social, emotional, behavioral, educational, mental, physical, and economic health and well-being outcomes of children and families, focusing on families who are Black, Latino, and Native American, as well as families with low incomes.
“Across almost every outcome, low-income and racially and ethnically minoritized children and their families have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s negative effects, and without urgent, thoughtful interventions for their health andwell-being, they will continue to bear it,” said Tumaini Rucker Coker, chief of the Division of General Pediatrics and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s, and chair of the committee that wrote the report.
Perhaps the most pronounced disparity in impacts is in bereaved children, the report notes. Children from racial and ethnic minority groups account for 65 percent of those who have lost a parent or primary caregiver due to COVID-19. The pandemic also drove declines in early childhood program enrollments, and the programs experiencing the highest enrollment losses were those serving racially and ethnically minoritized families, low-income families, and families that do not speak English at home. Relative maternal mortality rates increased by 33 percent during the pandemic as well, with the largest increases for Black and Latina women.
Mitigating both short-term impacts and shifts in life trajectories
The report recommends a path to address the immediate and short-term effects of the pandemic on children and their families; mitigate potential shifts in the life course trajectories of children and families due to the pandemic; collect comprehensive child- and family-focused data to help understand and quickly respond to the pandemic’s ongoing effects on children and families; and prepare for the next pandemic.
Among the report’s recommendations:
- The secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Education, in coordination with the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and Office of Management and Budget, states, Native American tribes, localities, and the nonprofit and private sectors, should establish a task force on addressing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and their families, with a focus on those who have experienced the greatest negative burdens of the pandemic: Black, Latino, and Native American children and families, and families with low incomes.
- All federal and state agencies and departments involved in COVID-19 pandemic relief planning and future public health disasters should address the needs of pregnant people, children, and low-income racially and ethnically minoritized populationsin the planning and management of public health disaster relief and recovery efforts.
- The U.S. Department of Education should renew pandemic-related funding that allocates a greater proportion to high-poverty schools and funding for early childhood education, to address enrollment and reengagement; academic recovery and achievement; positive social and emotional development; educator workforce retention and expansion; and preparation for the next pandemic (“pandemic proofing”).
- The federal government should incentivize states to expand key safety programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and child care subsidies. This should include incentivizing states to expand the number of families served by these safety net programs, raise the floor benefit levels that states must provide in relevant programs, and reduce administrative burdens to facilitate program participation. These improvements should be coupled with rigorous evaluations of the effects of program expansion on family socioeconomic well-being.
- The federal government should support federal paid family leave and paid sick leave programs, building on similar pandemic-era and existing state-level programs. Alternatively, the federal government could incentivize states to implement their own paid leave programs.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should strengthen and expand Medicaid coverage at the federal level so that all children and families have consistent access to high-quality, continuous, and affordable physical and mental health services.
- HHS should also increase investments in and advance policies and funding to ensure that children and families can access high-quality treatment and preventive behavioral health services in clinical settings, communities, and schools.
- The federal government should reissue and continue pandemic-era expansion of the child tax credit, as well as make distributions monthly rather than on a yearly basis. In the absence of such expansion, state governments should consider implementing their own monthly child tax credit payments, as well as other provisions, such as the earned income tax credit.
The study — undertaken by the Committee on Addressing the Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families — was sponsored by the Administration for Children & Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.