Immigration pediatrics: an inner-city pediatrician finds himself in a medical no-man's land where social policies undermine the care of his newly arrived immigrant patients -- and their contributions to society.

Travel makes us all foreigners of one sort or another. Travel can be a desperate act, as in the case of Central American economic immigrants coming to the United States, or it can be a volitional one, as in the case of an economist on a study fellowship. In both instances, being foreign creates new obstacles and new perspectives. Fitzhugh Mullan, a pediatrician working in inner-city Washington, D.C., is the first point of contact with the medical system for numbers of immigrant children. The many obstacles and the new perspectives that he and his patients encounter are what he calls 'immigration pediatrics.' Rhiannon Edwards, a blind health economist from Wales, spent a year in the United States studying health care. During the visit, both she and her guide dog needed clinical attention, back-to-back experiences that provided her with new perspectives on how Americans feel about choice in their lives. As a foreigner who came to the United States with different health care and coverage experiences, she shares her views on what the American penchant for choice really costs and in what ways it produces gains and losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]