Ebola Case Exposes Weakness in US Preparedness

Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, talks with Rachel Maddow about how funding cuts and other systemic challenges have put the U.S. at a disadvantage in dealing with health emergencies.

The welfare of U.S. children

Dr. Irwin Redlener, Co-founder and President of the Children's Health Fund joins Bob Herbert to discuss the health and welfare of children across the U.S. (Taped 08-13-14) Bob Herbert's Op-Ed.TV is a weekly half-hour program featuring interviews with significant men and women from a variety of fields: officeholders and activists, economists, labor leaders, writers and artists.

A Healthy Child Is a Better Student

"I want to be a paleontologist," my young male patient said, squinting at a wrinkled clipping from the newspaper of a dinosaur skeleton at the museum as I examined him. An impressive aspiration for a 10-year-old who looked like he needed glasses, but more so because his family was homeless and had none of the resources that could propel a more fortunate child toward his goal. But like the tens of thousands of kids living in poverty that we see on Children's Health Fund mobile medical clinics across the country, he had a dream and deserved a chance to pursue it.

Undocumented children need charitable help: Column

Children need high-quality health care regardless of citizenship. The justified outrage over detained minors in California, Oklahoma and Texas has focused the nation's attention on what is only the tip of the iceberg. While the number of apprehended, unaccompanied Central American children could reach 90,000 this year, an estimated 1 million undocumented children already live among us.

A Healthy Future for Immigrant Children Is a Healthy Future for the Nation

After years of postponing the inevitable, the U.S. is finally on the verge of reforming our dysfunctional immigration policies. For millions of immigrant families who have committed themselves to building better lives for themselves and their communities, change cannot come too soon. And for the children in these families, their hopes for the future are very much part of America’s future.

Legacy of Katrina: The Impact of a Flawed Recovery on Vulnerable Children of the Gulf Coast

“This study points to a major crisis facing the children of the post-Katrina Gulf Region,” says Irwin Redlener, MD, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children’s Health Fund. “From the perspective of the Gulf’s most vulnerable children and families, the recovery from Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans has been a dismal failure.”

How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history's farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack.