Palmetto State Reflections: SC Kids in Crisis

This past weekend I spent 3 days at the South Carolina American Academy of Pediatrics annual chapter meeting, and oh man it filled my cup so much.

The last time I attended the annual meeting was my second year of residency, my first month at MUSC as a pediatrics resident. If that math isn’t adding up, I may remind you that I started my residency training in Boston, but quickly bounced back home after the shocking and sudden closure of the Floating Hospital for Children.

At that first meeting I was a stranger to all, even my own class, but I was welcomed with open arms. Returning this time, my goodness those arms have stayed open! There were warm hugs all around, from my former professors at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville where I first fell in love with pediatrics, to my residency mentors from MUSC, to current residents who I’ve only previously spoken to over the phone or by text (even though 1 has even spent Easter with my family while I worked the holiday at my job in DC – a heartwarming story for another time).

One thing I can say for the kids of SC: There are a TON of brilliant, passionate, and dedicated pediatricians fighting for you. Not only are they working day-in and day-out to give kids across the Palmetto State the best care possible, they are also working off the clock to protect Medicaid, advance firearm safety education, and so much more.

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There’s a caveat here, and it’s that these amazing pediatricians are up against something powerful and often sinister: The South Carolina Statehouse.

While South Carolina pediatricians exist across the political spectrum, you would be hard pressed to find even one pediatrician who could say the SC GOP and SC Freedom Caucus aren’t working to make their job caring for children harder.

While it is important to be tactful when discussing legislation directly with lawmakers, it doesn’t bring me pause to tell my friends: We aren’t dealing with the brightest bulbs in the bunch. I mean, if you go the the South Carolina official government website for the Senate Medical Affairs Committee, 50% of the text on that page is dedicated to anti-abortion links and the other 50% is dedicated to defending the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (disclaimer: neither has any efficacy treating the virus). See the below screengrab… yikes!

So yeah, at a time when the state is dealing with a youth mental health crisis, a teen pregnancy uptick, syphilis out the wazoo, and impending cuts to Medicaid (thanks to the big ugly bill), the people pediatricians have to work with to solve issues are focused on anti-abortion propaganda and using anti-parasitics to treat viruses. I tell you all this so you understand what these doctors are working with and how badass they are for so often moving mountains to delay harmful bills, add helpful amendments, or change the minds of legislators altogether… and you’ll never hear their praises sung on the news.

But they aren’t fighting for clout, they are fighting for KIDS!!!

God bless these fighters and this awesome chapter that often fights twice as hard as the national organization just to get 1/10th of the credit.

To hope, to kids, and to a better South Carolina… someday.