How many of you have had your doctor ask you about money? Most of us haven't. But that is strange, because compared to most high-income countries, child poverty is an epidemic in the United States. It creates conditions that may elevate stress hormone levels and impair brain development. Poor children in the US are one and a half times more likely to die and twice as likely to be hospitalized as their middle-class counterparts. So my colleague Dr. Michael Hole and I started asking moms about money. We knew we needed to re imagine what a doctor's visit looks like, to get kids out of poverty and to give them a fair shot at a healthy life. Our questions led to a surprising solution: tax credits. It turns out, the earned income tax credit, or EITC, is the best poverty prescription we have in the US. The average mom gets two to three thousand dollars a year from it. When families get it, moms and babies are healthier: fewer depressed moms, babies weighing more at birth. But one out of five families who could get it doesn't, and most who do lose hundreds of dollars to the for-profit tax-preparation industry.