Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control.

Every school should have well-rehearsed emergency response protocols covering a variety of possible scenarios, from fire to armed intruders. Schools should have good lines of communications with local emergency response officials and practice those relationships in drills and special exercises.

Disasters like Oklahoma City and 9/11 were time-limited. The children who were affected psychologically could go to a place of normalcy.

If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.

The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.

Even the best community organizations and faith-based initiatives and the extraordinary charity of Americans across the country can't carry the brunt of eliminating poverty.

The reality is that it's harder to recruit pediatric subspecialists if you're not recruiting them for a children's hospital.