An Opportunity to Promote Health Equity: National Paid Family and Medical Leave

Abstract

* Abbreviations: COVID-19 — : coronavirus disease 2019 FMLA — : Family and Medical Leave Act PFL — : paid family leave PFML — : paid family and medical leave > When my daughter was born prematurely at 27 weeks, I was faced with the agonizing choice of staying with her in the neonatal intensive care unit or going back to work at my federally qualified community health center. Even as a pediatrician who is familiar with the enormous benefits of kangaroo care and singing, talking, and reading to newborns, I returned to work within two weeks of her birth because of my own economic situation. At the time, the state I lived in, Massachusetts, did not offer paid family and medical leave (PFML), and the clinic I worked at offered unpaid leave options. As a physician, I am enormously privileged with respect to job protection and income. However, the families I care for are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of unpaid leave. I have come to recognize PFML as a health equity crisis that requires an urgent national policy solution. > > Dr Kimberly Montez The United States is the only developed nation that fails to guarantee any kind of paid leave to workers. We lack a national paid family and medical leave (PFML) policy that encompasses: (1) paid parental leave, which would apply to both mothers and fathers after the birth of a child, adoption of a child, or fostering a child; (2) paid family leave (PFL), which would apply to caregivers of a hospitalized child, a medically complex child, or a family member such as a declining parent; and (3) paid medical or sick leave, which would allow one to manage personal or family illness. Although the 1993 Family and Medical … Address correspondence to Kimberly Montez, MD, MPH, Department of Pediatrics, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, 1 Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157. E-mail: kmontez{at}wakehealth.edu