Janice Schakowsky: “I thank you so much for your contributions-- continuing contributions--to the well-being of women and children. Yes…”

“I thank you so much for your contributions-- continuing contributions--to the well-being of women and children. Yes, it's true that title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant also does things like combat preterm birth, teen pregnancies, preventing chronic conditions, reducing disparities that are often present in our society. Let's be clear, not everybody has access to quality, affordable health services; and we want to improve that for more than 40 million women, infants, and children with special health care needs. My State uses title V funding to reduce infant mortality, prevent teen pregnancies, and to ensure newborn screenings, to test children early on for things that can become chronic conditions and make sure that we take care of them early, and to coordinate care for children with physical disabilities. And the sequestration cuts will reduce critical funding to these efforts by over $1.65 million in Illinois alone. And with those cuts, 306,000 fewer Illinois women, infants, and children can be served. Another really important area that I think a lot of people don't focus on is training of doctors. One of the things that sequestration, these automatic budget cuts, will do is reduce our ability to train pediatric physicians needed to ensure access to quality health care services to children and adolescents.…”