ne in every six American children is Hispanic, but it's hard to find them in the research on child health. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Latino children suffer from a disproportionate number of health problems that have been poorly studied. Diabetes is on the rise, and Latino boys have the highest rates of obesity among young people, but researchers don't know why. They also don't know why Puerto Rican children have rates of asthma higher than those in any other region.

Many of the statistics pose mysteries that go beyond the fact that Hispanic children are less likely to be covered by health insurance than are children in other ethnic groups. For instance, Latino children who are hospitalized with limb fractures receive less pain medication than do white or African-American youths. No one seems to know why, and data is hard to collect because Hispanic children are often included in the categories of white, black or "other" in medical research. Many researchers also ignore these children and their parents by excluding non-English-speakers from their studies.

Much more research is clearly necessary. Meanwhile one obvious place to start narrowing the health gap for Latino children is the language barriers. President Bill Clinton issued an executive order in August 2000 mandating that physicians who receive Medicaid and Medicare funds provide interpreter services for patients who do not speak English. The rules are flexible, but the national medical associations have opposed them as being too costly. Given the disturbing data on the state of Latino children's health, their objections send the wrong message.