This pediatrician wanted to help kids. So she started doing their parents' taxes.

VANCOUVER — Most visits to the doctor start with routine, groan-worthy questions: What do you eat? How much alcohol do you drink? Still sexually active?

Dr. Lucy Marcil, a Boston-based pediatrician, thinks another important question needs to be added to the mix: What do you earn?

Income levels affect people's health at all ages, and the inequalities are particularly pronounced in children. Poor kids are more likely to get sick compared to their middle-class counterparts, and poverty can increase stress levels and impede brain development, studies show.

So, a few years ago, Marcil and her colleagues started asking parents about money. Their questions led to a realization: Parents were making financial mistakes, some of which could be easily corrected. For instance, many weren't taking advantage of the earned income tax credit, an annual program for individuals with low or middle incomes. Not applying meant these families were potentially missing out on thousands; in 2017, the average credit was $2,445.

After hearing of the tax credit, one patient's mother asked: Why don't you help us prepare our taxes at the doctor's office?

"We all know that purgatory," Marcil said of waiting rooms. "Why not make good use of that time?"

She and a partner, Dr. Michael Hole, made it happen. In 2016, they launched StreetCred, a nonprofit providing free tax services in clinics. Hospitals register as tax-prep sites, and everyone from medical students to retirees volunteer to help after completing a four-hour course and an IRS exam. Marcil explained her initiative Tuesday in a talk at the TED conference in Vancouver.

The organization, which started with a lone site at Boston Medical Center, now offers such services in nine facilities in Boston, Austin, Asheville, N.C. and New Haven, Conn. And while clinics and tax-prep centers have co-located in the past, they are rarely integrated like this, Marcil said in an interview. "It's not something that doctors are prescribing to families as a health intervention" as is the case here, she said.

This approach has its skeptics: They are doctors, not accountants.

"But we have something that accountants don’t: access to families," Marcil said. "Over 90 percent of kids in the U.S. see a doctor at least once a year. Their parents trust us and will do anything to give them a better life. Doctors in every clinic around the country could be doing this work."

In its first two years of operations, StreetCred helped return $1.6 million to 750 families in Boston, or about $2,100 each. The families can use the extra money for medical care or to alleviate hunger. A nutritious, low-cost diet for a mom and two young kids costs about $475 a month, meaning the tax credits could finance about half a year's worth of food.

Marcil wants to see such centers expand across the U.S. Each site costs about $10,000 to run; the money funds a part-time, seasonal site operations coordinator mandated by the IRS. About 30 hospitals have already expressed interest in the program. "Our big audacious goal would be that it could exist in every state in the country. There's really no reason it couldn't," she says.

StreetCred could conceivably also offer job re-training programs or other financial services in the future, or assist parents with childcare, food stamps or other support programs.

Is this the career path Marcil, still practicing as a pediatrician, expected to take? Well, no.

"I certainly never thought I would be doing other people’s taxes, but here I am," she said. "We can reimagine healthcare as a place addressing the causes of poor health, be it infections or finances."

Read more coverage of the TED conference here.