Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today we talk about the health and well-being of migrant children in the United States.

Dr. Kiera Alvarez, a psychologist and Dr. Sarah Polk, a pediatrician, talked to Stephanie

Desmond about how steps can be taken to improve conditions for new arrivals and the barriers

that are standing in the way.

Let's listen.

Sarah Polk and Kiara Alvarez, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you for having us. Thank you, Stephanie.

So, Kiara, I'd like to start with you. You are a psychologist.

We're talking about migrant children today. Migrants who've come to Baltimore, who've come to

the United States, and their health and well-being. Could you sort of set the scene for me where we are?

Certainly. Well, here in Baltimore, this has been top of mind recently, in particular because of

recent data that has been released showing that Maryland is a state with the highest numbers per capita of unaccompanied

migrant children, meaning children that arrive in the U.S. without a primary caregiver or parent on

their journey. And as well as the Key Bridge collapse here in Baltimore has really highlighted

the important and often unseen contributions of immigrants to the local community and to the national economy.

So there's a lot of reasons why we're thinking about it right now, but the reality is that we've had,

...