The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America

I would like to introduce you to the Author of The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America who you will find inside our Christmas Gift Guide.

I was sent a copy of The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean for Twenty-First-Century America in exchange for Christmas Gift Guide Shopping for: Women.

Raymond is a talented young artist who carries his work from homeless shelter to homeless shelter in a tattered bag but has never even been inside a museum. He is emblematic of the children that the renowned pediatrician and children’s advocate Irwin Redlener has met over the course of his long and colorful career.

Inadequate education, barriers to health care, and crushing poverty make it overwhelmingly difficult for many children to realize their dreams. In this memoir, Redlener draws on poignant personal experiences to investigate the nation’s healthcare safety net and special programs that are designed to protect and nurture our most vulnerable kids, but that too often fail to do so.

The book follows Redlener’s winding career, from his work as a pediatrician in the Arkansas delta, to treating child abuse in a Miami hospital, to helping children in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

The reader accompanies him to the board of USA for Africa, to cofounding the Children’s Health Fund with Paul Simon, as he persuades Joan Baez to play a benefit concert for his clinic in rural Arkansas, and to dinner with Fidel Castro.

But what has motivated him most powerfully are the children who struggle with terrible adversities yet dream of becoming paleontologists, artists, and marine biologists.

These stories are his springboard for discussing larger policy issues that hinder us from effectively eradicating childhood poverty and overcoming barriers to accessible health care.

Persistent deprivation and the avoidable problems that accompany poverty ensnare millions of children, with rippling effects that harm the health, prosperity, and creativity of the adults they become. Redlener argues that we must drastically change our approach to meeting the needs of children—for their sake and to ensure America’s resiliency and influence in an increasingly complex and challenging world.

Meet the Author: Irwin Redlener

Author Irwin Redlener, M.D., is a pediatrician and founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which works to understand and improve the nation’s capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

In 2020, Dr. Redlener created the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia. He is a public health analyst for NBC and MSNBC and recently partnered with Cher in CherCares, a new program that assists communities struggling with COVID-19.

Dr. Redlener is also President Emeritus and Co-Founder of the Children’s Health Fund, a philanthropic initiative that he created with singer/songwriter Paul Simon and Karen Redlener to develop health care programs in 25 of the nation’s most medically underserved urban and rural communities.

He currently serves as a special advisor on emergency preparedness to New York and regularly communicates with leadership in the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, as well as Homeland Security.

He is also the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now. For more information, please visit www.irwinredlener.org

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Thank you.

Glenda, Charlie and David Cates