Our mission

EIS Family Health Guide writes practical, plain-English guides for parents of infants and young children navigating the parts of healthcare that nobody explains in the room with you.

We started this site because the gap between “what hospitals tell you” and “what parents actually need to know to make decisions” is a chasm. Hospital staff are doing their jobs — they don’t have time to walk every family through what a hospital bill is going to look like in six months, or which Medicaid programs the child qualifies for, or how to choose a pediatrician once discharge happens. The information exists. It’s just scattered across agency websites, hospital pamphlets, insurance EOBs, and a thousand other places, none of which talk to each other.

We pull it together. We write it in the way we wish someone had written it to us. And we link out to the official government, hospital, and accredited health-organization pages on every claim, so you can verify and dig deeper.

What we cover

  • Hospital Navigation — what to expect during NICU stays, ER visits, inpatient admissions, and discharge with an infant or young child
  • Health Insurance & Billing — reading hospital bills, Medicaid and CHIP, claims appeals, hospital financial assistance
  • Pediatric Care — choosing pediatricians, well-child visits, urgent care vs ER, newborn screening tests
  • Family Emergency Prep — emergency funds with a new baby, paperwork organization, parental leave rights, contingency planning
  • Health Resources — state-by-state directories of programs and family services orgs

What we are not

We are not a medical authority. We are not a clinic. We are not a charity. We do not provide medical advice, diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or recommend specific medications. Every article on this site is educational. If your child is experiencing a medical emergency, call 911. For medical questions, contact your child’s pediatrician or healthcare provider.

We are not the original Emergency Infant Services nonprofit. The original charity, which operated in Tulsa, Oklahoma for roughly 25 years providing baby essentials to families in financial crisis, closed before 2020. We acquired the dormant domain and built an independent editorial site at the same address. We are not affiliated with, successors to, or endorsed by the original organization or its former staff, board, or donors.

Editorial standards

  • Every clinical or regulatory claim is linked to an authoritative source — federal agencies (CDC, NIH, CMS, HHS), accredited medical bodies (American Academy of Pediatrics, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic), or peer-reviewed research. If we can’t link a claim, we don’t make it.
  • No paid product placements in editorial content. If we ever publish sponsored content, it will be labeled clearly as such, on the page and in the URL.
  • Annual review of every health article. Programs change. State eligibility rules change. We re-check every health article at least once a year and update the “last reviewed” date in the article header.
  • Plain English, no jargon shortcut. If we use a technical term, we explain it in the same paragraph the first time it appears.

Editorial team

See our editors and writers.

Contact

For corrections, feedback, or media questions, see our contact page.