Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Based on a survey of families of very preterm infants, Seppanen et al. report that: (1) parents rated post-discharge (post-NICU) care as poor or fair for 14.2% of children; (2) parents of one-third of children with health or developmental disorders rated their child’s post-hospital care as poor or fair, as compared to 12–13% of parents of typically developing and healthy children; and (3) parents’ suggestions for ways to improve post-hospital care focused primarily on better communication between the health care team and parents and better coordination of the child’s care. These findings point to a large opportunity for improving post-NICU services for infants born very preterm, especially for children with health or developmental disorders. In addition to gathering more information about families’ perspectives, vigorous quality improvement methods should be applied to improve the effectiveness of post-NICU clinics and the health and development outcomes of the infants and families served by these clinics.
The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the way different communities have been affected dependent on ethnic or social background. In this paper, the social determinants of COVID-19 will be considered with a review of the current literature and the opportunities for future research. There has been very little written about this approach to the infection and its consequences. Although children are not as affected as adults, the measures to control the pandemic may have significant consequences for children’s mental and physical well-being, as well as long-term challenges for their education. Research in pediatrics and child health should address this challenge going forward.