Children are paying an extraordinary price as the pandemic continues to ravage this country. Kids are experiencing negative impacts on their education, housing stability, food security, and family economics, but perhaps most importantly, on their mental and physical health and wellbeing. These adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress have proven to have profound and potentially lifelong detrimental effects.

The COVID-19 Community Emergency Response and Recovery Fund was launched by Children’s Health Fund in March 2020 to ensure resiliency and supportive measures are available for children living in this country’s most marginalized communities during and after the pandemic.

Knowing that the communities of color served by our partners are disproportionately affected both in terms of infection and death rates and economic impacts, our programmatic focus is designed to meet their needs. Our interventions range from increasing access to testing for COVID-19, to direct support for families to mitigate impacts from lost wages. We support increased technology access for remote learning and mental health services to address trauma. These investments not only address healthcare access, but also elevate the focus on social determinants of health, the primary driver of health outcomes. As access to vaccines joins the list of priorities, we are working to help our National Network partners overcome challenges so they can offer vaccinations to their communities. By supporting our partner programs’ efforts in this way, we aim to narrow equity gaps for Black and brown communities during the pandemic and use the lessons learned to shape our programs and policy for the future.