Children’s HealthWatch Releases New Policy Briefs, OSAH Releases Companion Podcast Episode

By Chantelle Wilkinson, NLIHC Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Campaigns, and Julie Walker, NLIHC Project Manager, Opportunity Starts at Home 

On September 16, Children’s HealthWatch, in collaboration with Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH), developed a two-part policy brief series examining housing as a foundation for child health and well-being. OSAH released a companion podcast episode, “Housing Stability and Health Equity for Children and Families,” featuring two of the briefs’ authors, Dr. Megan Sandel, Co-Lead Principal Investigator at Children’s HealthWatch, and Charlotte Bruce, Director of Policy at Children’s HealthWatch. In the episode, Dr. Sandel and Charlotte Bruce discuss the new policy briefs, the history of Children’s HealthWatch and OSAH's partnership, why affordable housing matters to healthcare providers, and how housing advocates can best partner with healthcare providers and public health leaders. 

The first brief, “A Foundation for Every Child: Housing Stability and Health Equity,” explores how housing instability and eviction affect children from pregnancy through young adulthood, deepen health inequities, and generate avoidable costs while outlining evidence-based federal solutions to help families remain stably housed. The second brief, “Stable Homes, Healthy Children: Cuts and Restrictions Threaten Child Health and Thriving,” examines how proposed cuts, eligibility restrictions, work reporting requirements, time limits, and weakened tenant protections could further destabilize families and harm children’s health. Together, the briefs make the case for sustained federal investment in safe, stable, and affordable housing.  

Rooted in substantial research on the topic, OSAH and Children’s HealthWatch support solutions that would reduce housing instability and homelessness, including those that: 

• Bridge the gap between rents and income so every low-income household can access the support they need to thrive in the community of their choice.  

• Increase the supply of housing affordable, available, and accessible to low-income households. 

• Stabilize households by providing emergency rental assistance to avert housing instability and homelessness.  

Children’s HealthWatch is a founding member of the OSAH campaign, and safe, affordable housing is essential to the organization’s mission to achieve health equity for children and families because of the profound impact it has on child health and development. In the podcast episode, Dr. Sandel shares examples of patients in her clinical practice as a pediatrician whose poor health was the direct result of unstable and unaffordable housing. Affordable housing was key to preventive care because when families had access to housing stability, their child’s health improved dramatically. Charlotte Bruce also shared best practices for housing advocates to build effective partnerships in the health sector, including making partnerships concrete by working together to identify the problem, a specific policy solution, and what each partner can contribute.  

The policy briefs and the companion podcast episode provide further evidence of the policies elected officials can advance to prevent eviction and homelessness. Paired with significant investments in affordable, equitable housing programs, bold legislation is urgently needed to respond to the housing crisis and improve health over a lifetime. 

Read the briefs.

Listen to the podcast episode on Spotify, Apple, and SoundCloud.