Introduction-Pediatric guidelines emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to view children in the context of family and community, and promote community resources at visits. In 2006, a Family Help Desk (FHD) was established in an urban academic-based clinic in Baltimore, MD to assist healthcare providers in educating families about available community-based resources.Methods-A longitudinal cohort pilot study was conducted during a 6-week period in 2007 to evaluate the impact of the FHD in connecting at-risk families to community resources.Results-Overall, 6% of parents (n = 59) who brought their child for a scheduled clinic visit accessed the FHD. Parents had a mean of 1.7 social needs, including after-school programs and childcare (29%), employment (13%), housing (12%), and food (11%). Most parents who utilized the FHD (64%) contacted a community resource or service within 6 months of their clinic visit. Nineteen parents (32%) who utilized the FHD enrolled in community programs.Conclusion-A clinic-based multi-disciplinarymodel can empower families to connect with community-based resources for basic social needs.Practice implications-The Family Help Deskmodel has great potential for addressing family psychosocial needs, and educating families about community resources within the context of pediatric primary care.

With a third of Pakistan inundated by the floods that have affected more than 33 million people, local relief workers and public health experts have said that they are fearing a rise in several waterborne and mosquito-borne diseases and skin infections. 1 2

As covid-19 takes hold worldwide, fear is fuelling already entrenched religious hatred—and hindering public health, writes Sonia Sarkar

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Sri Lanka’s sudden economic collapse has broken its healthcare system. Sonia Sarkar reports on how the country might claw back years of progress, lost in months

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Anniversaries are always special. They hold great significance in one's life. For scribes like us, it is crucial to remember anniversaries, but we remember occurrence of events of a different kind. For example, we revisit the anniversary of IC 814 hijack or Gujarat riots or 26/11 attacks in order to ingeminate stories of the victims and help them get justice.Of late, a section of the media has added another date to this list, which is November 4. Twelve years back, on this day, Manipur's Irom Sharmila Chanu sat on an indefinite hunger strike demanding the repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)-the law in force in the northeast and Kashmir that gives sweeping powers to the army, including the right to shoot on suspicion. In 2010, Sharmila's silent protest completed a decade. Curious to know what makes the Iron Lady of Manipur, as she is popularly known, this resilient, I had sought an appointment with her. Permission, however, was not easily granted. The request moved from one sarkari office to the other for nearly two months. Finally, I was allowed to meet her on 20 December 2010. Knowing well that even celebrated writer and activist Mahasweta Devi had been denied permission, I considered myself lucky.Before I met her, I had sketched an image about Sharmila in my mind by reading various newspaper reports that featured her struggle, her pain and her plight. They had made her look gloomy and exhausted. But my perception changed the moment I got the first glimpse of her, when I lifted the green curtains of the ward for under-trials needing medical attention at Imphal's Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital. She looked frail but cheerful and welcomed me with a wide smile as I walked into the room. Her freshly washed hair smelled of a familiar brand of shampoo. The shiny wet curls of her hair were carelessly playing on her forehead. She

The intense violence in Sudan is destroying a health system already on its knees, writes Sonia Sarkar