Taha Khan, MPH 2020

During this pandemic, students have had to switch from traditional to remote learning. As a result, you have communities who do not have access to resources and have basically been out of school this entire time. That may be because of inadequate parental supervision (especially for younger children) or because of a lack of safe spaces for online classes when they are sharing a room with many others. Added on top of this is the fact that parents are losing jobs, which means they cannot pay their utility bills or housing, and even though there is a moratorium on housing, there’s always this concern and stress associated with losing their place to live or having other things go wrong in their life that affects their children, too. We also know that when children are at home, there is a higher risk of domestic and interpersonal violence that may go unnoticed. And here’s when multidisciplinary care teams can play such an important role in providing quality healthcare. My primary care clinic in pediatrics is Boston Medical Center, the largest safety net hospital in the New England area, and we rely heavily on our social workers and patient navigators to provide for and support patients. They are able to sit with patients and direct them to resources and walk them through a very complicated health care and social system.

When we return to school post-COVID, it’ll be a gradual shift to get students back into the schools. Especially for the younger kids, who potentially might have been online for nearly two years, it’ll be a difficult transition of going back to school when they might have just started as first or second graders. In-person school will be a new concept, and what will help is that their classmates are also going through the same transition. We might be seeing a new generation raised with a different educational experience. During the pandemic, some teachers have been accommodating in assignment submissions, but others not as much. In those cases, as a child’s pediatrician, I take note and might write a letter to the teacher encouraging them to support my patient. It’s my responsibility to not only take care of the physical health of a child, but to also look at the entire bubble and see how we can best support their growth and development through education, family, housing situation, and more.

I want to encourage and applaud everyone for all the work that they have been doing in the healthcare community, along with other essential and frontline workers. It’s amazing to see what everyone has been working on, and it has been inspiring for me to be a part of this larger community.

There are days that are horrifying and depressing, but seeing people supporting each other has been incredibly inspiring. Even as we are in the midst of this surge with rising new cases and all, getting vaccinated and seeing COVID vaccines  roll out to the larger community gives me a lot of hope.

Taha Khan MD, MPH

MPH 2020 

Pediatrics/Child Neurology Resident  at the Boston Combined Residency Program (Boston Medical Center & Boston Children’s Hospital)

Compiled and Interviewed by Felicia Ho