[News item] Each dollar spent on kids’ nutrition can yield more than $100 later

 

 

From the 8 December 2014 ScienceDaily article

Date: December 8, 2014

Source: University of Waterloo

Summary: There are strong economic incentives for governments to invest in early childhood nutrition, reports a new paper that reveals that every dollar spent on nutrition during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life can provide a country up to $166 in future earnings.

There are strong economic incentives for governments to invest in early childhood nutrition, reports a new paper from the University of Waterloo and Cornell University. Published for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, the paper reveals that every dollar spent on nutrition during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life can provide a country up to $166 in future earnings.

“The returns on investments in nutrition have high benefit-cost ratios, especially in countries with higher income levels and a growing economy,” said Professor Susan Horton, of the School of Public Health and Health Systems and the Department of Economics at Waterloo.

Children who are undernourished during the first 1,000 days of their lives typically show stunted growth patterns by the age of three and have poorer cognitive skills than their well-fed peers. As adults they are less educated, earn lower wages and have more health problems throughout their lives.

“Height-for-age is a much better measure of health than weight-for-age. It is also predictive of economic outcomes,”

…

Currently, the World Health Organization is aiming to reduce stunting among children under age five by 40 per cent as part of its 2025 nutrition goals, and it is widely expected that the rate of stunting will also be included in its Sustainable Development Goals, which will be announced in 2015.

More information can be found at: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus/nutrition

[News item] Parents skipping needed care for children, pediatricians say | Association of Health Care Journalists

Parents skipping needed care for children, pediatricians say | Association of Health Care Journalists.

BY JOSEPH BURNS | NOVEMBER 26, 2014

High-deductible health plans (HDHPs) discourage families from seeking primary care for their children, according to the American Association of Pediatricians. The problem is so severe that the federal government should consider limiting HDHPs to adults only, the AAP said in a policy statement published in Pediatrics.

“HDHPs discourage use of nonpreventive primary care and thus are at odds with most recommendations for improving the organization of health care, which focus on strengthening primary care,” the association said in its statement. Under the Affordable Care Act, preventive services are covered in full without charge.

This is the second time in as many months that a report has shown consumers skipping needed care because of the cost. Last month, we reported that out-of-pocket health care costs force one out of every eight privately insured Americans to skip necessary medical treatment, according to the survey from the AP-NORC Center, “Privately Insured in America: Opinions on Health Care Costs and Coverage.” The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded the survey. In a report earlier this month, “Too High a Price: Out-of-Pocket Health Care Costs in the United States,” the Commonwealth Fund expressed similar concerns.

In an article about the policy statement, Alyson Sulaski Wyckoff, associate editor of Pediatrics, quoted Budd Shenkin, M.D., the lead author of the AAP’s policy statement on HDHPs, saying parents are so concerned about the cost of care that they don’t bring in their children when they should. “They’re reluctant to come in, they seek more telephone care, they’re reluctant to complete referrals, and they’re reluctant to come back for appointments to follow up on an illness,” he said.

For children with chronic conditions, foregoing care can exacerbate illnesses, said Thomas F. Long, M.D., chair of the association’s Committee on Child Health Financing. “If it’s going to cost them out-of-pocket money, they may say, ‘Well, it’s just a cold, I don’t need to see the doctor.’ And ‘just a cold, turns into ‘just pneumonia,’” he added.

The problem of delaying necessary care is one Paul Levy addressed in his blog, Not Running a Hospital, about HDHPs. “Beyond the sad impact on individual families in any given year, I fear that the economic backlash of these policies will be a deferment of needed health care treatments and a resulting future bulge of cost increases. We’re playing Whac-A-Mole here,” he wrote.

For the Commonwealth Fund, researchers found that among privately insured consumers across all income groups, low- and moderate-income adults were most likely to skip the health care they need because of high out-of-pocket costs.

It’s no surprise that adults with the lowest incomes were most likely to skip needed care, the fund reported. Among consumers earning less than $22,890 annually, 46 percent cited at least one example of skipping needed health care because of copayments or coinsurance: 28 percent did not fill a prescription; 28 percent skipped a medical test or follow-up treatment; 30 percent had a medical problem but did not see a doctor; and 24 percent did not see a specialist when needed.

When deductibles are high relative to income, consumers tend to skip care as well, and low- and moderate-income adults had the most trouble, the report showed. Consumers whose deductibles represent 5 percent or more of their income cited at least one example of skipping needed health care because of their deductible: 29 percent skipped a medical test or follow-up treatment; 27 percent had a medical problem but did not go to the doctor; 23 percent skipped a preventive care test; and 22 percent did not see a specialist despite their physician’s advice.

For an article in Modern Healthcare, Bob Herman covered this topic well. He cited the case of a woman in Indiana who was searching for a health plan on HealthCare.gov. A single, 40-year-old nonsmoker, this woman could choose from 29 plans and 24 of them were considered HDHPs, he wrote.

Under IRS rules, (PDF) an HDHP in 2015 is defined as one that has an annual deductible of at least $1,300 for an individual and $2,600 for a family coverage and annual out-of-pocket costs that do not exceed $6,450 for individual or $12,900 for a family.

The Commonwealth Fund report showed that 13 percent of consumers with private health insurance had plans with a deductibles equivalent to 5 percent or more of their income; that figure includes 25 percent of adults with low incomes and about 20 percent of adults with moderate incomes ($11,490 to $45,960 a year for a single person).

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Bad boys: Research predicts whether boys will grow out of it — or not

From the University of Michigan press release at EurkAlert 

Contact: Diane Swanbrow
swanbrow@umich.edu
734-647-9069
University of Michigan

Bad boys: Research predicts whether boys will grow out of it — or not

ANN ARBOR — Using the hi-tech tools of a new field called neurogenetics and a few simple questions for parents, a University of Michigan researcher is beginning to understand which boys are simply being boys and which may be headed for trouble.

“When young children lie or cheat or steal, parents naturally wonder if they’ll grow out of it,” says Luke Hyde, a U-M psychologist who is studying the development and treatment of antisocial behavior.

Hyde, a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and assistant professor of psychology, is speaking at ISR on November 11 on how genes, experience and the brain work together to heighten or reduce the risks that normal childhood transgressions will develop into full-blown conduct disorders in adolescence and early adulthood. His talk is part of the ISR Research Center for Group Dynamics seminar series on violence and aggression, and is free and open to the public.

“The lifetime prevalence of conduct disorder is around 10 percent, and even higher in males and low-income populations,” says Hyde. “The total cost to society is enormous, since these behaviors are often chronic, lasting through adulthood.”

With colleagues at U-M, Duke University, the University of Pittsburgh, and other institutions, Hyde has been exploring the role of the environment and biology as they interact over time to shape behavior. In particular, he is using the techniques of a new field called neurogenetics, which combines genetics, neuroscience and psychology, to learn how genes and neural processes interact with harsh environments, including dangerous neighborhoods and harsh parents, and with a child’s own levels of empathy and personality traits, to increase the risk of antisocial behavior.

In one recent study, for example, Hyde and colleagues studied subjects with over-reactive amygdala responses . The amygdala is an almond-shaped part of the brain’s primitive limbic system involved in processing fear and other visceral emotions. It has been associated with impulsive, aggressive behavior, as well as anxiety disorders and depression.

“Previous research suggests that the amygdala becomes over-reactive probably as a result of both genetics and experience,” says Hyde. “And once the amygdala is over-reactive, people tend to behave in an anxious, over-reactive way to things they see as a potential threat.

“Our study found that this tendency is moderated by a person’s environment, including the social support they get. If they’re not getting support from family, friends, neighbors, or professionals, then the link between the amygdala and anxious behavior is much stronger.”

In another study, Hyde and colleagues showed that kids who are impulsive are only at higher risk of engaging in antisocial behavior if they live in dangerous neighborhoods.

He also identified specific items within childhood behavior checklists that can be used as early as the age of three to identify kids who will likely have worse trajectories for anti-social behavior compared to other children who have similar behavior problems, such as throwing tantrums.

These items assess observable behaviors that include whether the child is cruel to animals, doesn’t seem to feel guilty after misbehaving, is sneaky, lies, is selfish or won’t share, and won’t change his or her behavior as a result of punishment.

“The results of this test aren’t really meaningful until age three or three-and-a-half,” says Hyde. “Before that, many of these behaviors are fairly common, and don’t predict anything. But after age three, if children are still behaving in these ways, their behavior is more likely to escalate in the following years rather than improve.”

There is good news, though. Kids who scored high on this test benefitted just as much as other kids from interventions, according to Hyde. These interventions, often called parent management training, focus on giving parents better skills to manage child behavior problems, including training parents to spend more positive time with their kids, use time-outs instead of physical punishments, and reward good behavior by giving out stickers.

“Parents need to know that intervention works, especially if it’s done early,” says Hyde. “They need to go for help if they see signs of trouble. Clinical psychologists, among other professionals, have empirically supported treatments that are quite effective for children, especially in this age period.”

 

###

Funding for this research was provided by The National Institute of Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world’s largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and educating researchers and students from around the world. For more information, visit the ISR Web site at http://home.isr.umich.edu

 

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[Reblog] The Environmental Factors That Influence Our Children’s Illnesses

POSTED ON OCTOBER 23, 2013 BY BABYGREENSERIES

 

© Ampyang | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

In general, we know that most illnesses and diseases are caused by an interplay of genetics and environmental factors. While there is little we can do to alter genetic susceptibility, understanding what and how environmental factors exacerbate if not trigger illnesses and diseases can help you keep your child safe and healthy.

First, note that there are disease agents – chemical and biological – that your child is exposed to through ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact with soil, food, water and the air. That’s called direct exposure. The opposite, indirect exposure, involves contact with disease agents through interactions with parents and caretakers. For instance, if the father who works in the construction industry comes home and holds his baby, the baby may inhale industrial fumes from his work clothes or chemical residue from the father’s worksite may be transferred from the father’s skin to the baby. Through both modes, children absorb disease agents that alter hormones and disrupt metabolic processes thereby triggering a number of childhood illnesses. It’s also important to recognize that exploratory behavior for children includes putting objects in the mouth, hand-to-mouth contact, which increases the risk for exposure to environmental disease agents.

The chart below lists a number of common childhood illnesses, an associated environmental agent and potential direct and indirect sources of exposures. Use this list to determine if there are any sources of disease agents that you should keep away from your child.

Presenting Problem	Environmental                  Agent	Potential Exposures
Abdominal Pain	Lead	Batteries, smelting, painting, ceramics, enameling, welding, plumbing
Acute Psychoses	Lead Carbon disulfide mercury	Fungicide, maternal infection, wood preserving, removing paint from old houses, viscose rayon
Angina	Methylene chloride Carbon monoxide	Improperly vented indoor combustion sources, traffic exhaust, car repair, furnaces, water heaters, gas grill, foundry, wood finishing
Asthma	Formaldehyde Pet dander Tobacco smoke Toluene diisocyanate	Plastics, textiles, lacquer, playing with pets, polyurethane kits
Cardiac Arrhythmia	Fluorocarbons Solvents	Refrigerator repair, automobile emissions, cigarette smoke, paint thinners, propane gas
Dermatosis	Solvents Soaps Caustic alkali Metals	Plastics, metal cleaning, electroplating, machining, housekeeping, leather tanning
Headache	Carbon monoxide Solvents	Unvented kerosene, tobacco smoke, firefighting, dry cleaning, wood finishing, gas grill, water heaters, furnaces, automobile exhaust, improperly vented indoor combustion mechanisms
Hepatitis	Halogenated hydrocarbons	Healthcare workers, lacquer
Pulmonary Edema	Cadmium Nitrogen oxides Phosgene Halogen gases	Farming, welding, smelting, chemical operations

 

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‘Saving Brains’ of kids in developing countries: Grand Challenges Canada funds 14 bold new ideas

Realize this is a long post.
Guess I opted to include the full press release largely because I served in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Kudos to the Canadian government and all who work to alleviate pain and foster development everywhere.
So good to see an ever growing list of health applications for cell phones. Below is an example of an application for community health workers. Also good to see one project involving fathers!

 

From the 23 October 2013 EurkAlert

10 projects nominated for grants up to $2 million; 10 projects awarded $270,000, including one to reduce harm to brains of pre-term babies caused by pain of multiple daily hospital needles, other procedures

Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the Government of Canada, today extended a total of $10.1 million to 14 bold, creative projects aimed at improving the early brain development of kids in low-resource countries.

Projects in Jamaica, Colombia, Bangladesh and Indonesia are scale-up award nominees (board-approved grants up to CDN $2 million, pending successful contract negotiations).

Seed grants of CDN $270,000 each are given to seven organizations overseas — in Vietnam (2 grants), Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Zambia and Peru. And three seed grants are given to Canadian organizations: the Hospital for Sick Kids, Toronto (two grants), and the University Health Network, Toronto.

All 14 projects will be implemented in developing countries: five in Africa, six in Asia and three in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Impoverished brains result in impoverished countries,” says Dr. Peter A. Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada. “For a wide range of sad, all-too-familiar and preventable reasons, an estimated 200 million children under 5 years old in the world’s 112 low- and middle-income countries will fail to reach their brain’s full development potential.”

“These projects illustrate well the success of our search for ‘bold ideas with big impact,’ pioneering new approaches worldwide to maximize the number of kids in low-resource countries who achieve and contribute to their fullest capabilities,” Dr. Singer added.

Says Mrs. Laureen Harper, honourary chairperson of the program: “The Grand Challenges Canada Saving Brains program is designed to help millions of children in developing countries who fail to reach their full development potential due to such factors as malnutrition, infection, birth complications, or a lack of nurturing and stimulation at an early age.”

Says the Honourable Christian Paradis, Canadian Minister of International Development and Minister for La Francophonie: “Our Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper, is committed to advancing the health of the world’s most vulnerable mothers, newborns and children. We are proud to partner with Grand Challenges Canada to find innovative solutions to the most pressing global health challenges. The Saving Brains program is just one example of how innovation can help improve the lives of children in their earliest days. ”

Seed grant awards

Hospital procedures: mitigating harm of pain to brain development of a tiny preterm baby

The Centre for Global Child Health, Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada)

Working in Ghana, this project will introduce ways of alleviating pain for infants born prematurely and treated in special neonatal intensive care units (NICU)s — the tiniest of kids who experience moderate to severe pain several times daily due to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures such as blood sample collections and medicine injections.

Project leader Dr. Bonnie Stevens of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children says the severity of brain defects found later among children born preterm can be linked to the number of painful procedures experienced in the NICU.

“Higher volumes of painful procedures with inadequately managed pain have also been associated with cognitive, language and motor problems, and low academic achievement,” says Dr. Stevens. “Although the consequences of pain are known, procedural pain is frequently under-managed and under-prioritized.”

Worldwide, about 13 million infants are born preterm each year — a number growing steadily thanks to modern technologies. And even in North America, Europe and Australia, surveys show “neonates” are exposed to an average of 4 to 14 painful procedures daily, with only about 1 in 3 receiving pain relief.

Less is known about neonatal pain management in low- and middle-income countries, where the incidence of neonatal sickness and death is highest. However, a survey in Kenya showed that infants in seven special care newborn nurseries experienced, on average, four painful procedures daily, half of them injections and blood sample withdrawals. No form of analgesia was documented.

The project will introduce Ghanaian caregivers and parents to an integrated “Toolkit for Minimizing the Impact of Pain in Infants,” adapted from successful practices in Canada. Videos and other educational materials will detail simple, universally affordable, proven ways to mitigate procedural pain for an infant, such as:

 

• Sweet solutions (e.g., sucrose or glucose) administered orally prior to a painful procedure;

 

• Kangaroo care, where infants are held in skin-to-skin contact with a parent;
• Facilitated tucking, where infants are held in a fetal-like position to provide support and boundaries;
• Breastfeeding.

Combined, these interventions have a demonstrated cumulative pain-relieving effect.

“Inadequate resources are cited as the major impediment to pain management in infants as well as a lack of knowledge, severe staff shortages and formal training about pain. The proposed Toolkit intervention will address these issues,” says Dr. Stevens.

The project draws on existing partnerships between the University of Ghana School of Nursing, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra and Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, together training 1,000 pediatric nurses in Ghana over the next 10-15 years, supported by a Canadian government grant. Plans calls for the toolkit’s integration into the curriculum at the School of Nursing (where there is limited pain content) and its use scaled up to reach additional countries.

Says Dr. Stevens: “Decreasing the intensity of painful procedures in hospitalized infants using simple, inexpensive, evidence-based strategies has the potential to minimize both immediate stress and suffering, and the known longer-term impact of pain on the developing neonatal brain and cognitive deficits.”

Malaria in the womb: New malaria policies to protect early brain development in Malawi

University Health Network (Canada)

Each year, about 125 million pregnant women are at risk of placental malaria (PM) and about 25% of all pregnancies in sub-Saharan Africa are complicated by PM at delivery.

PM has profound maternal and fetal health consequences, including increased risk of anemia, preterm birth, fetal growth restriction and delivery of low birth weight infants. The impact of in-utero malaria exposure on fetal neurodevelopment is unknown, however researchers with the project team recently linked malaria-exposure in animals with persistent and long-term deficits in memory and behaviour.

Dr. Kevin Kain of the Toronto-based University Health Network, leader of this project in Malawi, says malaria exposure in the womb “may derail the developmental trajectory of generations of children.” And a shift in understanding — that malaria exposure may result not just in infant mortality and low birth weight but affects also long-term neurodevelopment “represents a change in paradigm that will initiate a re-evaluation of public health policies designed to protect women and children from the deleterious consequences of PM.”

Today’s approach to this problem — intermittent preventive treatment of pregnant women with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine — is losing effectiveness due to rising drug resistance, resulting in persistent infections.

The new project involves a novel antenatal care policy that focuses resources on accurate point-of-care malaria diagnosis and effective case- management of infection to reduce the burden of malaria in pregnancy and protect early brain development.

The work is expected to provide “compelling evidence that will directly impact national and international policies on the prevention of malaria in pregnancy. If our findings support an intervention that leads to improved neurocognitive outcome for exposed infants, it will refocus public health policies towards protecting fetal brain development.”

Project collaborators include the University of Malawi, and the University of Liverpool, UK.

An Integrated Toolkit to Save Newborns’ Brains in Kenya

The Centre for Global Child Health, Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada)

The first month of life is a critical period in brain growth and development that can be affected in many ways, including from hypothermia and infection.

Reducing the number of these impediments to young brain growth is the aim of a toolkit created by Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Kids for use initially by mothers in Kenya.

Contents of the tool kit (which costs less than $5) include:

• A clean delivery kit to minimize infection at time of delivery
• A sterilizing gel that, applied to the umbilical stump, reduces certain severe infections by 75% and mortality from all causes by 25 to 40%;
• An emollient to promote skin integrity, helping to reduce infection and prevent hypothermia (and shown to reduce mortality in hospitalized preterm infants)
• A handheld scale to spot early warnings signaled by an infant’s weight, and a ThermoSpot to identify hypothermia and fever
• A mylar infant sleeve and reusable heating device to treat hypothermia

Information on infant stimulation, involving play and communication strategies proven beneficial to neurodevelopment in low birth weight newborns.

If any danger signals are found, community health workers will refer cases to appropriate health care.

“We believe that improved neurodevelopment outcomes at age 1 will translate into sustainable longer term gains in academic performance, employment, productivity, and ultimately more human capital,” says project leader Dr. Shaun Morris of the Hospital for Sick Kids.

Project collaborators include the Aga Khan University, Kenya.

Iron-fortified biscuits to reduce maternal and child anemia

St John’s Research Institute, Unit ofCBCI Society for Medical Education, Bangalore, (India)

Anemia — a low level of red blood cells causing a body’s reduced capacity to carry oxygen — results from micronutrient deficiencies, most often iron.

India has one of the highest rates of anemia globally: over 79% of children aged 6 to 8 months and 58% of the 26 million pregnant women each year. Some 17 million of these women have access to iron pills yet 11 million do not take them for the recommend time (adherence rate: 35%). Why? The pill is big and tastes metallic.

Yet iron deficiency anemia dramatically affects the health of a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, increasing risks of death and sickness during childbirth, including hemorrhage and low-birth weight. Long-term, iron deficiency anemia delays psychomotor development and impairs cognitive development in infants, preschool and school-aged children around the world.

Moreover, researchers say, the effects of anemia are, “not likely to be corrected by subsequent iron therapy… anemic children will have impaired performance in tests of language skills, motor skills, and coordination, reportedly equivalent to a 5 to 10 point deficit in IQ.”

Part of the answer may be an iron-fortified biscuit for use by pregnant women, indistinguishable in taste from popular Indian biscuits.

Coupled with marketing, project leaders say their new biscuit is more likely to be used by previously non-adherent pregnant women, and increase iron stores in newborns, “which translates to more sustainable and protected early brain development.”

“After extensive consumer research, the nutrition team led by Dr A.V. Kurpad and the project collaborators, Violet Health Inc have developed several prototypes specifically designed with the tastes and preferences of pregnant women in India,” says project leader Dr. Pratibha Dwarkanath of St John’s Research Institute, unit of CBCI Society for Medical Education.

“We estimate our solution to be more cost-effective than the iron pill, while reaching more anemic women and their children”

“After proof of concept, we anticipate a scaled trial in Karnataka within three years and reducing anemia in women and infants.”

Project collaborators include Violet Health, Inc., NY, and the Indian Institute of Management, India Bangalore.

Early childhood development in low-resource settings: There’s an app for that.

“CommCare” project empowers community health workers with new mobile software for health workers, parents and caregivers

Ugunja Community Resource Center (Kenya)

In an unprecedented effort, Kenya’s Ugunja Community Resource Center will empower community health workers in Western Kenya with field-tested, mobile phone software to individualize early child development care in the family home and monitor progress via the Internet.

Calling it “the world’s first mobile phone-based early childhood development software platform for low-resource settings,” project leader Aggey Omondi says the software suite will include “apps” for community health workers, for parents and for caregivers, offering practical advice, tools, educational aids and forms for assessing, fostering early childhood development, including cognitive development, nutritional support, management of common illnesses, and counselling on cognitive stimulation for parents and caregivers.

Equipped with mobile phones carrying the software, 30 community health workers will serve 1500households with at least one child under age 3, and 10 parents will receive mobile phones containing the relevant application.

The online monitoring program features a “dashboard” to help users visualize key process and performance indicators, as well as outcome metrics and an analytics suite to enable program managers to analyze trends.

Project collaborators include the Harvard Business School and Dimagi Inc. of Cambridge MA, the University of Pennsylvania and the Kenya Methodist University School of Medicine and Health.

Managing maternal depression and stimulating kids to promote neurodevelopment

International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

Almost 60% of kids in Bangladesh are at risk of poor development due to low body weight (22%) and undernutrition (41%), poverty, and sub-optimal stimulation due to low parenting knowledge.

The mother is usually the key childcare provider and her physical and mental health is a major predictor of child development, particularly in low and middle-income countries.

Using the service of home-based workers of community health clinics in rural Bangladesh, the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research will offer a combined intervention that includes both a “Thinking Healthy” program for mothers of children 6 to 12 months old with depressive symptoms and psycho-social stimulation for their children.

Says project leader Dr. Fahmida Tofail: “Previous projects have used only one or the other of the interventions — depression treatment or child’s psychosocial stimulation. In this approach, we address the mother and child together to produce an optimal child-friendly environment to maximize the investment.”

Project collaborators include the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, the University of the West Indies, and the Institute for Child Health at University College, London UK.

Community-based family coaching for children with developmental risks

Partners in Health / Socios En Salud Surcursal (Peru)

In Lima, Peru, researchers will demonstrate a standardized community-based screening and treatment program delivered by community health workers to 60 children (6 to 24 months old) at risk of neurodevelopmental delay (NDD).

The community health workers will identify and treat at-risk children and assist their caregivers, addressing multi-level problems. The intervention includes 1) coaching parents on how to stimulate their child’s to promote development, and 2) providing parents with social support and encouragement.

The kids and their primary caregivers will be randomly assigned to one of three interventions:

1. monthly nutritional support alone;
2. nutritional support plus 3 months of the intervention in the home; or
3. nutritional support plus 3 months of the intervention in group settings.

Among the impacts to be measured and evaluated:

• Changes in child development and parenting
• The child, caregiver, and household characteristics that predict who benefits most
• How intervention should be delivered for maximum effect (one-on-one or group settings)

Says project leader Leonid Lecca: “The vicious cycle of developmental delay and limited socioeconomic opportunity (manifested in poor academic performance and child labor) have major impact at the societal level, in terms of economic productivity and social inequality.”

Project collaborators include the Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the University of California San Francisco Medical School, as well as stakeholders in Rwanda and Haiti who will help explore how to adapt this model for global dissemination.

Learning Clubs for women’s health and infant development

Research and Training Centre for Community Development (Vietnam)

Vietnamese researchers point to eight major risks to optimal early childhood brain development around the time of birth in resource-constrained settings:

• Intrauterine growth restriction
• Stunting
• Iron deficiency anaemia
• Iodine deficiency
• Unresponsive caregiving
• Insufficient cognitive stimulation
• Maternal mental health problems, and
• Exposure to family violence

And these risks interact: the poorest women who have experienced intimate partner violence are at the highest risk of common mental disorders. And, even when all other factors are controlled, those who experience common mental disorders during pregnancy are less likely to participate in essential preventive health care, including the use of iodized salt to prevent iodine deficiency and taking iron supplements to counter anaemia

Risks continue in early infancy, both for mom and baby: a third of mothers have common mental disorders, 22% of infants are moderately or severely anemic and 7.4% are stunted. Six-month-old infants of mothers with antenatal common mental disorders have infant cognitive development scores on average significantly lower than infants of mothers without common mental disorders in pregnancy.

To date, interventions in these settings have focused on one or at most two of these risks, and outcomes for child development have been, at best, only partially effective.

Capitalizing on 15+ years of experience in rural Vietnam, this project led by Vietnam’s Research and Training Centre for Community Development in Hanoi aims to pioneer a low-cost program addressing all eight risks through a structured, universal program combining information, learning activities and social support with groups of women at the same life stage: Learning Clubs for Women and Infants.

Content will include interventions to address all eight risks early childhood brain development, recognizing and integrating consideration of each woman’s health and social circumstances during pregnancy and in the years in which they are providing primary child care.

The benefit envisioned: enhanced fetal, newborn and early infant development through improved maternal nutrition, mental health, birth outcomes, sensitivity and responsiveness in care-giving and feeding and reduced exposure to family violence.

We estimate that this comprehensive approach will reduce preterm birth, anaemia, stunting, rates of cognitive and social emotional development at age six months, with the effects maintained at least to age three among young children in rural Vietnam.

Project collaborators include the Jean Hailes Research Unit, Australia’s Monash University and the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne.

What about Dad?

Fathers Involvement: Saving Brains in Vietnam

Hanoi School of Public Health (Vietnam)

Recent research has shown that children of a highly-involved male parent show increased cognitive competence, greater empathy, and less sex-stereotyped beliefs. They have higher IQs, stronger verbal skills, are more academically motivated and successful, have fewer emotional and behavioural problems, show better emotional regulation, better social and problem-solving skills and greater overall life satisfaction.

This project by Hanoi’s School of Public Health aims to mobilize more fathers in parenting and involve them directly in the cognitive and emotional development of their infants, and to indirectly enhance infants’ nutritional status by having fathers encourage mother’s breastfeeding exclusivity and duration.

Fathers will be exposed to:

• Multimedia messages about the importance of breastfeeding and father involvement
• Small group antenatal and postpartum education via community health centers
• Individual at-home counselling
• Light- hearted public fathering contests, organized with the assistance of the local Farmers Association, to praise and reward teams of fathers demonstrating good fathering knowledge and behaviours, and
• Fathers Clubs, developed in collaboration with the Labour trade union and Farmers Association to provide peer support.The project involves 400 couples (with 400 children) in Vietnam’s Hai Duong province.

“Father-infant involvement is an important emerging innovation in developing countries,” says project leader Dr. Tran Bich. “Evolving cultural norms have resulted in fathering roles that range from traditional expectations of father as primarily economic provider and head of the household to more contemporary involvement with mothers and children.”

Project collaborators include Canada’s Brock University, St. Catherines, and St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo.

A new category of community workers in Zambia dedicated to early childhood development

Zambia Centre for Applied Health Research and Development (Lusaka, Zambia)

Recent research on brain development suggests that no single risk or developmental stress causes most harm; the main problem is the accumulated impacts of multiple early childhood adversities. Single risk factor interventions are, therefore, unlikely to achieve the highest possible impact on child development.

This project of the Zambia Centre for Applied Health and Development is designed as a comprehensive, integrated, community-based child development program, rolled out in Zambia’s Choma District.

The key innovation, and a critical improvement over previous efforts: establishment of a new cadre of health workers with the sole, explicit mission to monitor and support all aspects of child development under the age of 2.

The newly-trained, community-based “child development agents” (CDA) will form a natural link between mothers and the larger health system, including community health workers.

The CDA will have three principal responsibilities:

• Monitor children’s nutritional status on a monthly basis through home visits, and ensure immediate treatment of moderate to severe malnutrition and acute infections (malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia) through local CHWs or public health facilities as needed.
• Ensure all children receive the full health benefits as defined in national guidelines, including exclusive breastfeeding to 6 months of age, a complete set of vaccinations, vitamin A supplementation, growth monitoring, and deworming every 6 months starting at 12 months of age.
• Coordinate local selected volunteer mothers in running a home -based stimulation component similar in nature to the ones successfully implemented in Cambodia

CDAs will be supported with mobile health technology to ensure continuous and efficient communication, monitoring and close implementation of service protocols.

The mobile device will serve three principal functions:

• Provide weekly visit reminders and a list of health services for mothers and children who missed services or appointments
• Allow CDAs to communicate with local CHWs and health facility staff to ensure immediate treatment of acute health conditions
• Support CDAs with visual materials (videos) to compliment their weekly training with volunteer mothers

Each CDA will be responsible for 250 households, which corresponds to approximately 50 to 60 children under the age of 2 in their communities. CDAs will enroll eligible mothers and their child in the study, and then will be responsible for the health and development of the respective child up to 24 months of age. Each week, the CDA will be sent a list mothers and children who missed a scheduled services or appointments through an automated electronic system; list of children that should be visited in the respective week for the monthly nutrition and health follow-up well; and reminder of content of early childhood learning sessions to support child nurturing. They will be monitored by CDA supervisors on a regular basis, and will be given verbal feedback on their performance. In each month, the best 10% of CDAs will receive a symbolic “CDA of the month” award.

The project will directly benefit 225 children in the short term, and, the hope, all Zambian children in the long run. Its main targets: reduced stunting and improved child development at age 2.

Says project leader Dr. Davidson Hamer: “The program has the potential to transform how mothers think about child development and early education, and to increase maternal understanding of age-appropriate development and cognitive stimulation.”

Project collaborators include America’s Harvard School of Public Health, and the Center for Global Health and Development at Boston University, and Zambia’s Centre for Infectious Diseases Research and Ministry of Health, Child Health Unit.

Large-scale award nominees

Putting online a proven, early cognitive stimulation program to help those helping kids in developing countries

University of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica)

A package of low-cost materials proven to help early cognitive stimulation will be made available online to support in-home interventions by community workers in developing countries, thanks to this project led by Christine Powell, PhD, Senior Lecturer at the Tropical Medicine Research Institute, University of West Indies. The materials can be used despite limited training by any qualified person (NGO, international agency, local government department) and include a curriculum, training manuals, books, play materials, and training videos, all tailored to the children’s culture.

The curriculum being placed online is the product of years of work pioneering the foundation for early childhood development in low resource settings. The web-based package is expected to provide skills and materials for 10 countries to adapt and implement the home cognitive stimulation package.

Stimulation and nutrition for pre-schoolers in rural Colombia

Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia)

While there are government-run programs in urban centers, to now rural kids in Columbia have had available only a home-based daycare system run by women with little if any formal training.

Providing an integrated, two-stage intervention for children from 6 months to 5 years old is the idea behind of a project led by Raquel Bernal of Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes.

In the first stage, facilitators of existing family (home-visiting) services for pregnant women and children up to 30 months old will be trained to promote effective mothering, including nutrition, child development, and interaction with the child.

In the second stage, local mothers running community nurseries will receive 160 hours of training in topics such as fostering child development and developmental milestones in children 24-60 months old, and activities to encourage executive functioning of the child brain. Crucially, both curricular improvements will be implemented along with regular coaching and monitoring visits by trained supervisors.

An estimated 4,800 children will have access to more supportive developmental experiences as a result of this project.

Nutrition and psychosocial stimulation to improve development of malnourished children in Bangladesh

International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

Early cognitive development will be promoted through this program to treat malnourished children in rural Bangladeshi health clinics, improving the knowledge and skills of both mothers and field staff in early cognitive development. The anticipated outcome: improved language skills among children, as well as better mental and psychomotor development.

The project takes advantage of a time when kids and their parents are interacting with health clinics to provide more than just calories. challenge is how to do it in a way that is feasible to deliver by health workers with lots big workloads. The anticipated outcome: improvements in language, mental, and psychomotor development for approximately 3,000 children.

Golden Generation Program for community-based early childhood development

University of Mataram (Mataram, Indonesia)

The Golden Generation Program will integrate early development, health and nutrition programs to promote thriving children, and includes strategies to:

• enhance staff capabilities in early childhood development centers in villages;
• deploy of specially-trained community workers to coach and certify couples in early childhood development; and
• engage a mobile real-time data platform to link providers and clients to track infant growth and development, and flag needed interventions.

Program impact will be assessed through a randomized trial involving 80 communities, covering approximately 30,000 couples and their infants over a 2-year period.

To foster long-term sustainability and ongoing program development, the Program will also establish community worker cooperatives and a Center for Early Childhood Development at the University of Mataram.

The program is a collaboration between the University of Mataram, the Provincial and District Governments of Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, the Summit Institute of Development and the Harvard School of Public Health.

 

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Saving Brains

The Grand Challenges Canada Saving Brains Program promotes fulfillment of human capital potential by focusing on interventions that nurture brain development in the first 1,000 days of life. The goal of the Saving Brains program is to unlock the potential of children by developing and scaling up products, services and policies that protect and nurture early brain development in an equitable and sustainable manner. Almost CDN $30 million has been committed to date. In addition to projects, the Saving Brains program is investing in an authoritative quantification of the economic impact and true costs of poverty-related risk factors for cognitive and human capital development.

Grand Challenges Canada invites global, regional and corporate partners committed to enabling innovation for early brain development to join us in Saving Brains.

Please visit grandchallenges.ca and look for us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

About Grand Challenges Canada

Grand Challenges Canada is dedicated to supporting bold ideas with big impact in global health. We are funded by the Government of Canada through the Development Innovation Fund announced in the 2008 Federal Budget. We fund innovators in low and middle income countries and Canada. Grand Challenges Canada works with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and other global health foundations and organizations to find sustainable long-term solutions through integrated innovation – bold ideas which integrate science, technology, social and business innovation. Grand Challenges Canada is hosted at the Sandra Rotman Centre.

http://www.grandchallenges.ca

About Canada’s International Development Research Centre

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) supports research in developing countries to promote growth and development. IDRC also encourages sharing this knowledge with policymakers, other researchers and communities around the world. The result is innovative, lasting local solutions that aim to bring choice and change to those who need it most.

As the Government of Canada’s lead on the Development Innovation Fund, IDRC draws on decades of experience managing publicly funded research projects to administer the Development Innovation Fund. IDRC also ensures that developing country researchers and concerns are front and centre in this exciting new initiative.

http://www.idrc.ca

About Canadian Institutes of Health Research

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada’s health research investment agency. CIHR’s mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to enable its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened Canadian health care system. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 14,100 health researchers and trainees across Canada. CIHR will be responsible for the administration of international peer review, according to international standards of excellence. The results of CIHR-led peer reviews will guide the awarding of grants by Grand Challenges Canada from the Development Innovation Fund.

http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca

About the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada

The mandate of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada is to manage Canada’s diplomatic and consular relations, to encourage the country’s international trade, and to lead Canada’s international development and humanitarian assistance.

http://www.international.gc.ca

About Sandra Rotman Centre

The Sandra Rotman Centre is based at University Health Network and University of Toronto. We develop innovative global health solutions and help bring them to scale where they are most urgently needed. The Sandra Rotman Centre hosts Grand Challenges Canada.

http://www.srcglobal.org

 

Related articles

• Simple Method May Help Predict Tiny Preemies’ Outlook (nlm.nih.gov)
• Indiana University study shines new light on consequences of preterm births (eurekalert.org)
• Study Identifies New Consequences of Preterm Births (counselheal.com)
• Testing for Neonatal Sepsis: The Next Generation of Biomarkers (promega.wordpress.com)
• Neonatal Pain-Related Stress and NFKBIA Genotype Are Associated with Altered Cortisol Levels in Preterm Boys at School Age (plosone.org)

 

[Repost] Household chaos may be hazardous to a child’s health

Remembering that the television was only on for about an hour weekday evening (after homework was done!), and Saturday mornings for cartoons. Also Sunday evenings.  Still  generally stick to this after all these years. Even without homework.
No angel, could be on the Internet less!!

From the 9 October 2013 EurekAlert article

Study links crowding, noise, lack of routine to worse outcomes

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Kindergarten-age children have poorer health if their home life is marked by disorder, noise and a lack of routine and they have a mother who has a chaotic work life, new research suggests.

The results show the importance of order and routine in helping preschoolers stay healthy and develop to the best of their potential, said Claire Kamp Dush, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.

“Children need to have order in their lives,” Kamp Dush said. “When their life is chaotic and not predictable, it can lead to poorer health.”

Kamp Dush said that the study involved mostly low-income families, and the results showed mothers who were more impoverished reported significantly higher levels of chaos.

“I don’t think that the findings would be different in a middle-class sample – chaos is bad for children from any background,” she said.

“But most middle-class families can avoid the same level of chaos that we saw in the most impoverished families. We’re not talking about the chaos of your kids being overinvolved in activities and the parents having to run them from one place to another. This harmful chaos is much more fundamental.”

Kamp Dush conducted the study with Kammi Schmeer, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State, and Miles Taylor, assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University. Their results appear online in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, and included 3,288 mothers who were interviewed at their homes by a trained interviewer when their child was 3 and again when he or she was 5 years old. Most of the parents were unmarried and low-income.

The researchers used several measures of household chaos: crowding (more than one person per room), TV background noise (TV was on more than 5 hours a day), lack of regular bedtime for the child, and a home rated as noisy, unclean and cluttered by the interviewer.

The study also included a measure of the mother’s work chaos, which included stress caused by the work schedule, difficulty dealing with child care problems during working hours, lack of flexibility to handle family needs and a constantly changing work schedule.

The children’s health was rated by their mother at ages 3 and 5 as excellent, very good, good, fair or poor.

Results showed that higher levels of household chaos and mothers’ work chaos when their children were age 3 were linked to lower ratings of child health at age 5, even after taking into account initial child health and other factors that may have had an impact.

In addition, the researchers were also able to use a statistical technique to determine if the causality may have been reversed: in other words, if poor child health might lead to more household chaos. “It would be easy to see how having a sick child may make your household more chaotic, but that’s not what we found. We did clearly see, however, that a chaotic household at age 3 was linked to poorer health at age 5,” Kamp Dush said.

The most common source of household chaos was television noise, with more than 60 percent of mothers reporting the television was on more than five hours a day. Between 15 and 20 percent of households reported crowding, noise, and unclean and cluttered rooms.

About a third of the mothers had inflexible work schedules and 11 percent worked multiple jobs.

How does household chaos lead to sicker children? Kamp Dush noted that chaos has been linked to stress, and stress has been shown to lead to poorer health. Women with inflexible work schedules may not be able to take their children to the doctor when needed. And a dirty house may increase exposure to toxins and germs.

Kamp Dush emphasized that the findings shouldn’t be used to suggest that the parents are at fault for the chaos in their households.

“We’re not blaming the victims here – there is a larger system involved,” she said.

“These mothers can’t help it that their jobs don’t give them the flexibility to deal with sick kids. They can’t afford a larger house or apartment to deal with overcrowding. With their work schedules, they often don’t have time to keep a clean home and they don’t have the money to spend on organizational systems or cleaning services used by middle-class families to keep their homes in order.”

What these mothers and fathers need most is jobs that allow them to maintain regular schedules and have the flexibility to deal with sick children, Kamp Dush said. Having to maintain two jobs is also detrimental to keeping households free of chaos.

 

###

 

Kamp Dush received support for this study from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

 

 

 

 

August is National Immunization Awareness Month

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a whole Web site on Vaccines and Immunizations
Some highlights

• Vaccine Information for Parents
• Vaccines and Preventable Diseases
• Vaccine Side Effects and Safety

 

Related articles

• Healthcare Professionals Are Key to Boosting Adult Immunizations (nfid.wordpress.com)
• Doctors on Call: Vaccines have eliminated diseases — but our kids still need to be immunized (jacksonville.com)
• Back-to-school vaccinations: Are your kids up to date? (abclocal.go.com)
• Report: Teen HPV vaccination rate still lagging (mysanantonio.com)

 

Medication Health News

Are you up-to-date on your immunizations? August is National Immunization Awareness month, a public health campaign sponsored by the CDC to recognized the importance of vaccination and to bring awareness to vaccinations that are not meeting national goals. Vaccines are the best prevention for some serious often life-threatening illnesses. This campaign is targeting a different group each week during the month of August: students starting college, students k-12, adults 26+, and pregnant women and newborns. The CDC is providing educational materials to healthcare providers so that they can encourage their patients to get immunized. Accessibility to vaccines has improved now that many pharmacists can deliver adult vaccinations. Howis your pharmacy taking advantage of this campaign toimprove vaccination rates in adults?

For more information click here CDC

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Facebook medical advice isn’t what’s best for your child

From the 29 July 2013 KevinMD.com article

COURTNEY SCHMIDT, PHARMD | SOCIAL MEDIA | JULY 29, 2013

It happens about once a week. As I scroll through Facebook and peruse the latest happenings, I notice that someone (usually a mom of small children, like me) has posed a question to their Facebook friends about some type of health dilemma.

“Little Sally is cutting teeth, and she’s miserable. What can I give her to make her feel better?”

“Johnny has such a bad cough, and he can barely breathe. Anyone used Vick’s Vaporub on a baby before?”

“Took  Sam for his 4-month checkup today. Dr. says I should wait to start giving him baby food until 6 months, but I feel like he’s ready. Any moms have some advice?”

I’ve seen each of these health concerns voiced on Facebook along with many others. Various friends weigh in with their tidbits of advice or personal experience, and usually the mom will choose from those options and then report back about how that advice worked.

Here’s the problem: all health information isn’t created equal.

And crowdsourcing for medical advice isn’t likely to result in the best outcome for your child.

Although the Facebook community recommended several products for Sally’s mom to try to ease teething pain, they were likely unaware that many of these products are no longer recommended for infants because of serious health risks associated with their use.

While Johnny’s mom’s Facebook friends offered enthusiastic support for rubbing Vick’s VapoRub on his chest, feet, and even putting it under his nose, they didn’t know that this product can be harmful to children under two years of age.

Read the entire article here (which includes great Web sites for child health/medical information)

Related resources

• Caring for Your Baby and Young Child, 5th Edition: Birth to Age 5. Author: The American Academy of Pediatrics
• My Child Is Sick! Expert Advice for Managing Common Illnesses and Injuries. Author: Barton D. Schmitt, MD, FAAP
• Healthychildren.org
• Familydoctor.org includes health information for the whole family
• KidsHealth provides information about health, behavior, and development from before birth through the teen years.

Yoga not too religious for school: U.S. judge

Tips for a Chemical free summer (part 2)

Dr. Ibby Omole ND

I would hope that after reading my first blog, some of you would have rushed out to replace your Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen with something that is a little bit better for your health.

Pesticides are a significant source of toxicity. People are exposed to pesticides via food and the environment in particular lawn care. While research is usually focused on massive pesticide exposure, low dose long-term pesticide exposure is difficult to capture. Not to mention the fact that pesticide residue has been linked to everything from hypospadias to decreased intelligence, learning and memory in children. Children are particularly vulnerable because of their immature organs, rapidly dividing and migrating cells, higher metabolic rate and smaller size.

Ways to decrease pesticide exposure.

1. Eat locally and organically. Summer is the perfect season to do this. Farmer’s markets are filled with everything from organic produce to baked goods and plants. Summer is also…

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How Marketing Has an Impact on Children’s Health

Related article

Best and Worst of Food Marketing to Our Children (Food, Facts, and Fads)

 

FTC Updates Report on Food Marketing to Children

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released a report entitled, “A Review of Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents,” which shows that food and beverage companies spent less in marketing targeted to children in 2009 than they did in 2006, and the food and beverages marketed to youth had very small improvements in nutritional quality during that period. Food companies spent $1.8 billion to advertise to children age 2 to 17 in 2009, down from $2.1 billion in 2006.

The report was an update to the FTC’s 2008 report, “Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation,” which documented the amount food companies spent on marketing targeted to youth in 2006.

The reduction can be attributed to a decline in advertising on traditional media such as TV, radio, and print; however, food companies increased their youth-targeted spending on other forms of marketing, including websites, internet advertising, viral/word-of-mouth marketing, product placements, movie and video ads, cross-promotion licenses, celebrity endorsements, events, and philanthropy. In addition, spending on food marketing to tweens and teens increased from 2006 to 2009.

“While there’s been progress in advertising to children age 2 to 11 on traditional media, children continue to see too many ads for products of questionable nutritional quality,” said Jennifer Harris, PhD, MBA, Rudd Center Director of Marketing Initiatives. “Companies have also shifted much of their spending toward a somewhat older child audience, including 12- to 14-year-olds, and into newer forms of marketing.”

“Industry has faced public and legal pressure as well as pressure from health experts to improve their practices,” said Kelly Brownell, PhD, Rudd Center Director. “The voluntary changes they made are only modest and they have stepped up marketing in some arenas. The pressure on industry to do more must continue.”

The FTC’s report was conducted as part of a Congressional inquiry into rising childhood obesity rates and aims to help public health experts, parents, and lawmakers understand the extent of food marketing to children.

 

Food Marketing to Youth: The Best and the Worst of 2012

Only $11.4 million was spent on marketing fruits and vegetables to youth in 2006, representing less than 1 percent of the $2 billion spent on all food marketing to youth, according to the National Fruit & Vegetable Alliance and Federal Trade Commission. Food and beverage companies use traditional forms of marketing, such as television advertising and promotions on product packages, but companies are increasingly using more unique and invasive techniques. The Rudd Center compiled a collection of thebest and worst examples of food marketing practices in 2012, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Summer Olympic Games (worst) and Disney restricting junk food advertising to children (best).

 

Million Ideas

Lots of us hate to admit it, but marketing has a huge impact on what we buy, eat, and how we live our lives. While marketing and advertising affects all of us, children are especially impressionable. A good advertiser knows what will stick with kids, and they use every trick in the book. The junk food industry is no exception, and marketers understand that getting their message to children leads to big business. To show just how much of an impact marketing has on our children’s health, we reached out to teach.com and USC Rossier Online and borrowed their infographic, “Targeting Children With Treats.”

A huge thanks to Teach.com and USC Rossier Online for sharing the infographic!

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Childhood Poverty, Stress, May Shape Genes And Immune System

From the 22 October 2012 article at Medical News Today

A University of British Columbia and Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) study has revealed that childhood poverty, stress as an adult, and demographics such as age, sex and ethnicity, all leave an imprint on a person’s genes. And, that this imprint could play a role in our immune response. …

..

Known as epigenetics, or the study of changes in gene expression, this research examined a process called DNA methylation where a chemical molecule is added to DNA and acts like a dimmer on a light bulb switch, turning genes on or off or setting them somewhere in between. Research has shown that a person’s life experiences play a role in shaping DNA methylation patterns. ..

..

“We found biological residue of early life poverty,” said Michael Kobor, an associate professor of medical genetics at UBC, whose CMMT lab at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) led the research. “This was based on clear evidence that environmental influences correlate with epigenetic patterns.” ..

[youtube=[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaNH56Vpg-A]]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6tSndex0CM&feature%5D

Related articles

• Genes, Immune System Shaped by Childhood Poverty, Stress (dogmaandgeopolitics.wordpress.com)
• Kobor, CMMT study shows genes and immune system shaped by childhood poverty, stress (aplaceofmind.ubc.ca)
• New Study: Stress Increases Risk of Mental, Physical Illness (baktoedenherbalproducts.wordpress.com)

 

[UM Hospital Report] Sick Kids, Struggling Parents

From the report

• Nearly two-thirds of parents of young children in child care say their children could not attend because of illness in the past year.
• One-third of parents of young children are concerned about losing jobs or losing pay when taking off work to care for their sick children.
• 8% of parents with kids in child care say taking their sick child to the emergency room is more convenient than seeing a primary care doctor.

….

Work Impact

Missing work because a sick child was sent home or not allowed into child care is common; 42% of parents of young children in child care have missed work in the last year. Nearly a quarter of parents (26%) missed work three or more times over a one-year period because of their child.

When a child is sick, parents must either take time off from work, make other child care arrangements, or try to get immediate medical care in order to comply with exclusion policies for the child care setting. One-half of parents with children in child care report that finding alternative or back-up child care for their sick children is difficult (Figure 1).

In addition, about one-third of parents say taking time off of work with a sick child is difficult because they may lose pay or lose their job, and a similar proportion report that they do not receive enough paid time off from work to care for their sick children (Figure 1).

When asked about where to take a sick child for care, 8% of parents with children in child care say taking their sick child to the emergency room is more convenient than seeing a primary care doctor…..

 

Additional UM Reports (over 50) may be found here 
Titles include

• Parents of high school athletes speak out on performance-enhancing drugs
• Knowledge key to support for embryonic stem cell research
• Who do voters prefer for children’s health issues?
• Bullying worries parents of overweight and obese children
• Retail clinics: an emerging source of health care for children
• Obesity tops list of biggest health problems for kids in 2008
• Summer safety for ‘tweens’ home alone
• Children in research: many parents willing if risk of harm is small
• Ask the doctor: is my child’s medicine FDA-approved?
• Child health threats: are consumer alerts enough?

Related articles

• New poll shows importance of paid sick leave to parents of young children (washingtonpolicywatch.org)
• One-third of parents concerned about losing jobs, pay when they stay home with sick kids who can’t attend child care (prnewswire.com)
• Parents fear sick kids will cost them their jobs (sott.net)
• Times are tough for low-wage workers (miamiherald.com)
• Improving child care in the U.S.: A Q&A (nj.com)

 

Children’s Environmental Health (Informative Web Page with Links from the US CDC)

From the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Children’s Environmental Health Web site

The environment affects children differently than adults. Because their bodies are still growing, children are at greater risk if they are exposed to environmental contaminants. Contaminants are anything that can cause something to become unclean, polluted, or not pure. They can be found anywhere and some are unsafe. A toddler playing in dirt contaminated with high levels of lead can become sick from lead poisoning. A child with asthma playing outside when the air quality is bad may have an asthma attack. Environmental hazards are not just outside, but can also be found inside a child’s home or school. Children living in older homes with lead-based paint can get sick from breathing lead dust or swallowing chipping paint. Drinking water from a private well and even a community water system is also a concern if it’s contaminated. Bacteria and other harmful chemicals can be a threat to anyone’s health, but especially to young children.

Click here for the Daily Air Quality Forecast

Related articles

• Organizations Urge Parents To Protect Children From Lead Poisoning (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)
• CDC Warns Laundry Detergent Pods Pose Health Risk (wibw.com)
• EPA Spends $1.2 Million to Provide ‘Asthma-Friendly Homes’ Training (cnsnews.com)

October is Children’s Health Month

Child Development (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From an email recently received from USA.gov

October is Children’s Health Month. If you are a parent or caregiver, check out these resources to help promote your child’s good health:

• Vaccines — Vaccination is one of the best ways to protect children from several potentially serious diseases. Get recommended vaccine information based on your child’s age group.
• Nutrition Resources and 10 Kid-Friendly Veggies and Fruits (pdf) — Encourage children to eat vegetables and fruits by making it fun. Get ideas for healthy snacks and meals.
• Child Development — Get the basics about healthy development; learn about specific conditions that affect development; get parenting tips; and more.
  
• Developmental Milestones — Skills such as crawling, walking, and waving are developmental milestones. Check out milestones for children between the ages of two months and five years.
• Oral Health — Find out what you can do to help prevent tooth decay and other oral diseases.
  
• Child Safety — Get resources to help keep your child safe during different stages of development.
  
• Physical Activity — Children need 60 minutes of play with moderate to vigorous activity every day. Get ideas for steps you can take to increase your child’s level of activity.
  

Many elements contribute to a child’s good health and overall well-being. Find additional topics on children’s health.

Related articles

• Are Kindergarten Kids Getting Their Vaccines? (children.webmd.com)
• Oral Health Tips for the Whole Family (juiciestdeals.com)

Pre-Teen Health Disparities

Logo of the United States National Library of Medicine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the (NLM) Director’s comments page 

Greetings from the National Library of Medicine and MedlinePlus.gov

Regards to all our listeners!

I’m Rob Logan, Ph.D. senior staff National Library of Medicine for Donald Lindberg, M.D, the Director of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Here is what’s new this week in MedlinePlus.

Harmful health behaviors and experiences are significantly more likely among African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans than white fifth-graders, suggests a pioneering health disparities study recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In a study of 5,119 randomly selected public school fifth-graders (and their parents) in three U.S. cities, 20 percent of African-American fifth-graders witnessed a threat or injury with a gun compared to 11 percent of Latinos and five percent of white youngsters.

Several of the study’s 16 measures consistently suggest unhealthy experiences were more likely to occur among African-American and Hispanic American fifth-graders while therapeutic actions were more likely to happen to white peers.

For example, while white fifth-graders exercised vigorously an average of four and a half days per week, Latino youngsters exercised about 3.77 days and African-American fifth-graders vigorously exercised about three and a half days each week. All the above differences are statistically significant.

The authors assessed other unhealthy experiences including victimization by peers and unhealthy behaviors such as alcohol use. The authors evaluated other therapeutic behaviors including bike-helmet use…

Continue reading the transcript here

OR

Listen to the message here   –>podcast100812.mp3

Related articles

• New Study Shows School has Large Role in Kids’ Health Disparities (cityconnectsblog.wordpress.com)

Attractive names sustain increased vegetable intake in schools

 

From the 17 September 2012 article at EurekAlert

Attractive, catchy names can compel youngsters to eat more vegetables

		IMAGE: He is a professor of marketing, Cornell University. Click here for more information.

The age-old parental struggle of convincing youngsters to eat their fruits and vegetables has some new allies: Power Punch Broccoli, X-Ray Vision Carrots — and a host of catchy names for entrees in school cafeterias. Cornell University researchers studied how a simple change, such as using attractive names, would influence elementary-aged children’s consumption of vegetables.

		IMAGE: He is a professor of behavioral economics, Cornell University. Click here for more information.

In the first study, plain old carrots were transformed into “X-ray Vision Carrots.” 147 students ranging from 8-11 years old from 5 ethnically and economically diverse schools participated in tasting the cool new foods. Lunchroom menus were the same except that carrots were added on three consecutive days. They found, for example, that by naming plain old carrots “X-ray vision carrots,” fully 66 percent of the carrots were eaten, far greater than the 32 percent eaten when labeled “Food of the Day” — and the 35 percent eaten when unnamed.

Related articles

• Healthy food cues better school lunch choices (futurity.org)

 

Kids.gov – Health, Science, and Safety Information for Children, Parents, and Teachers

 

Kids.gov is the U.S. government’s website for children (grades K-8). Kids, parents, and teachers can use the site to get help with homework, access lesson plans, watch videos, play games, and more. Some highlights If you’ve visited Kids.gov previously, you’ll notice that the website has been completely redesigned. The vibrant new site provides areas for three specific audiences: kids (grades K-5), teens (grades 6-8), and grown-ups (teachers and parents).

Kids.gov is the U.S. government’s website for children (grades K-8). Kids, parents, and teachers can use the site to get help with homework, access lesson plans, watch videos, play games, and more.  If you’ve visited Kids.gov previously, you’ll notice that the website has been completely redesigned. The vibrant new site provides areas for three specific audiences: kids (grades K-5), teens (grades 6-8), and grown-ups (teachers and parents).

Information Connections – website for parents of children with developmental disabilities and chronic diseases

 

From the web page at the National Network of Medical Libraries

Connect with Information Connections

By Nalini Mahajan
Director, Medical Library
Marionjoy Rehabilitation Hospital

Information Connections is a website for parents of children with developmental disabilities and chronic diseases with a special focus on Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Down Syndrome, and Traumatic Brain Injury. The informative website was developed and launched by the Marianjoy Medical Library with funding from the National Network of Library of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region (NN/LM GMR) and is sponsored by Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital. It is accessible to anyone from anywhere and it is free.

Since its initial launch in April 2011, InformationConnections.org has helped thousands of families seeking help on these topics. Website usage and feedback in our first year has been exceptional.

We would love to promote our Web site to everyone who could benefit from this wonderful resource and would appreciate any help from you. Please spread the word around; like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, feel free to blog about us, and place a link to us on your website. Our goal is to have 500 friends by the end of 2012. Once we reach the magic number of 500 friends, 3 winners be selected randomly and each will receive a $25.00 gift certificate.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Consumer Health, Funding, News from the Region, Outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

 

 

[Reblog] The Doctor Is In: The arithmetic of children’s medicine

[Reblog]

The Doctor Is In: The arithmetic of children’s medicine

The Doctor Is In is an occasional series where JHU Press authors discuss the latest developments and news in health and medicine.

Guest post by Edward A. Bell, Pharm.D., BCPS

Do you know how to properly measure and administer medicine to your child? Arecent study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meetingsuggests that parents with low reading and math skills may not.

This study is similar to others in that it describes how common and easy it is for parents to err when determining and measuring liquid medication doses for their children. A multitude of factors contribute to the potential for these errors, including misinterpretation of medications and their strengths and miscalculation of a child’s specific dose by his or her weight. What is interesting about this study is that it evaluated a unique aspect of how parents determine medication doses for their children—the parents’ reading and math skills. Nearly one-half of the parents (41%) made a dosing error, demonstrating that the process of giving a dose of liquid medication to an infant or child can be somewhat complicated and that errors can be easy to make. According to anarticle on ScienceDaily, “parents’ math scores, in particular, were associated with measuring mistakes, with parents who scored below the third grade level on the math test having almost a five times increased odds of making a dosing error.”

Health care providers—including physicians, pharmacists, and nurses—should not assume that all parents can accurately administer medicine to their child, and should adequately educate parents on how to do so.

Edward A. Bell is a pediatric pharmacist and a professor of clinical sciences at Drake University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and the Blank Children’s Hospital and Clinics, Des Moines, Iowa. His book A Parent’s Guide to Children’s Medicines, is forthcoming this summer.

The information provided in this blog post is not meant to substitute for medical advice or care provided by a physician, and testing and treatment should not be based solely on its contents. Instead, treatment must be developed in a dialogue between the individual and his or her physician. This post has been written to help with that dialogue. The services of a competent medical professional should be obtained whenever medical advice is needed.

Related resources

• Giving Medication to Children(Food and Drug Administration)
• Got a Sick Kid? Don’t Guess. Read the Label(Food and Drug Administration)
• Also available in Spanish
• Medicine and Your Child: How to Give Your Child Medicine(American Academy of Family Physicians)

Related articles

• Parents’ Poor Math Skills May = Medication Errors (nlm.nih.gov)
• Over-the-Counter Medicine: Kids Aren’t Just Small Adults (education.com)
• Parents – Dosing Tips for Kids and Cough and Cold Remedies (education.com)
• Acetaminophen overdoses common but preventable: MDs (ctv.ca)

Annual Report on U.S. Kids’ Health a Mixed Bag http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/press_release.asp Infant mortality, preterm births and teen births have dropped across the United States as have violent crime and victimization among children. But more children are living in poverty and the fight against childhood obesity is not making much headway according to a new Federal report.

 

From the ChildStats.gov press release

Federal report shows drops in infant mortality, preterm birth rates

Annual statistics compilation notes increases in poverty, drop in secure parental employment

The infant mortality rate, the preterm birth rate, and the adolescent birth rate all continued to decline, average mathematics scores increased for 4th and 8th grade students, the violent crime victimization rate among youth fell, as did the percentage of young children living in a home where someone smoked, according to the federal government’s annual statistical report on the well-being of the nation’s children and youth.

However, the percentage of children living in poverty increased, and the percentage of children with at least one parent employed full time, year-round decreased, the report said.

These and other findings are described in America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2012.

[Report may be found here,  table of contents and PDF option in left column]

The report was compiled by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a working group of 22 federal agencies that produce and use data on issues related to children and families. The report uses the most recently available and reliable official federal statistics to describe the family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health of America’s children and youth…

..

New to this year’s report is a figure showing the percentage of children in race groups constituting less than 10 percent of the population (American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or two or more races). This detailed figure is available only online athttp://childstats.gov. It supplements figure 1 in this year’s brief, which shows the percentage of children by race and Hispanic origin.

Also new is a revised figure showing the percentages of high school graduates who completed selected mathematics and science coursework (Figure 13).

Among the findings in this year’s report:

• A drop in births to adolescents, from 20 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 17 (2009) to 17 per 1,000 (2010, preliminary data)
• A drop in the proportion of infants born before 37 weeks’ gestation (preterm), from 12.2 percent (2009) to 12.0 percent (2010, preliminary data)
• A drop in deaths before the first birthday, from 6.4 per 1,000 births (2009) to 6.1 per 1,000 births (2010, preliminary data)
• A drop in the percentage of children from birth to 17 years of age living with at least one parent employed year round full time, from 72 percent (2009) to 71 percent (2010)
• A rise in the proportion of children from birth to 17 years of age living in poverty, from 21 percent (2009) to 22 percent (2010)
• A drop in the percentage of children from birth to 17 years of age living in households classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as food insecure, from 23 percent (2009) to 22 percent (2010)
• An increase in vaccination coverage with one dose or more of the meningococcal conjugate vaccine for adolescents ages 13–17, from 12 percent (2006) to 63 percent (2010)
• A drop in the proportion of youth ages 12–17 who were victims of serious violent crimes, from 11 per 1,000 youth ages 12–17 (2009) to 7 per 1,000 (2010)
• A drop in the percentage of children, birth to 6 years of age, living in a home where someone smoked regularly, from 8.4 percent (2005) to 6.1 percent (2010)
• An increase of one point in the average mathematics scores for both 4th and 8th graders from 2009 to 2011
• A drop in the percentage of youth ages 16–19 neither enrolled in high school or college nor working, from 9 percent (2010) to 8 percent (2011)
• A rise in the percentage of children from birth to 17 years of age living in counties in which levels of one or more air pollutants were above allowable levels, from 59 percent (2009) to 67 percent (2010)

Related articles

• 20 Percent of U.S. Women Were Uninsured in 2010, Up From 15 Percent in 2000
  http://www.commonwealthfund.org/News/News-Releases/2012/Jul/Oceans-Apart.aspx
  Twenty percent of U.S. women (18.7 million) ages 19-64 were uninsured in 2010, up from 15 percent (12.8 million) in 2000, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report on women’s health care. The report estimates that once fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will cover nearly all women, reducing the uninsured rate among women from 20 percent to 8 percent.

Keep in mind that uninsured pregnant women have less access to healthcare, this affects the health of children
in the womb, both short term and long term.

• U.S. infant mortality, preterm birth drop (upi.com)
• Federal report shows drops in infant mortality, preterm birth rates (nih.gov)
• Annual Report on U.S. Kids’ Health a Mixed Bag (news.health.com)
• US infant mortality, preterm birth drop – UPI.com (drugstoresource.wordpress.com)
• Annual Report on U.S. Kids’ Health a Mixed Bag (ihafs.org)
• Annual Report on U.S. Kids’ Health a Mixed Bag (nlm.nih.gov)
• Preterm Birth Rates and Infant Death Rates Drop (webmd.com)
• New Study Targets Preterm Birth Risks In First-Time Moms (huffingtonpost.com)
• U.S. in Top 10 for Premature Births (nlm.nih.gov)
• As Preterm Births Soar Globally, U.S. Ranks 130 of 184 (nlm.nih.gov)
• Kids well-being report: improved health, but many live in poverty (csmonitor.com)
• ARMM has lowest infant mortality rate (newsinfo.inquirer.net)

[Reblog] Maternal Health and the Status of Women

[Reblog]

Maternal Health and the Status of Women

Both globally and domestically, maternal health and the standing of women are inextricably linked. If women do not have the means and access to give birth safely, with trained and educated midwives, physicians and nurses, with appropriate prenatal education and care, it is often indicative of the standing of women in their communities and countries overall. Women’s inequality is also linked to the soaring population growth in developing countries, which will pose a range of new challenges for the next few generations.

Some may point to the United States as an anomaly, citing women’s increasing economic and financial independence, education, and leadership roles in America, while in terms of maternal health rankings, we remain pathetically far down the line for our resources (49 other countries are safer places to give birth than the U.S. – despite us spending more money on healthcare than anywhere else). Of course, the recent and incessant attacks on allowing women to access credible, accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and services makes this statistic not entirely…surprising, shall we say.

So, I found the incredibly detailed and visually impressive infographic by the National Post, pulled from spectacular data and research done by Save the Children to be particularly fascinating. What they did was combine information on the health, economic, and education status of women to create overall rankings of the best and worst countries for women, splitting the countries into categories of more developed, less developed, and least developed, and the countries were ranked in relation to the other countries in their category (the divisions were based on the 2008 United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects, which most recently no longer classified based on development standing). While these divisions and the rankings can certainly be contentious and may incite some disagreement (nothing unusual there, these kind of rankings usually are), I thought the results were interesting. Some highlights – Norway is first, Somalia is last. The United States was 19th, and Canada was 17th (Estonia fell in between us and the Great White North) in the most developed. Israel is first in the less developed category, and Bhutan is first in the least developed category. The full report with data from Save the Children is also available, if you want to learn more about the information combined to make this image. Take a look:

[larger image at http://larkincallaghan.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/best-and-worst-places-to-be-a-woman.jpg]

A Woman’s Place – Courtesy of the National Post

One thing that I thought was particularly great was that the researchers combined women’s health and children’s heath data to create rankings specific to being a mother, when that category is sometimes only assessed based on access to reproductive care.The specific rankings of maternal health highlights largely mimics the overall standing of women, as seen here – Norway is number one, again, and Niger falls into last place:

Mother’s Index, Courtesy of Save the Children

I think these images and graphs are particularly moving given one of the top health stories coming out of the New York Times today, which showed that a recent Johns Hopkins study indicated meeting the contraception needs of women in developing countries could reduce maternal mortality (and thereby increase the standing of women in many of the nations doing poorly in the above ranking) globally by a third. When looking at the countries in the infographic that have low rates of using modern contraception and the correlation between that and their ranking in terms of status of women, it’s not surprising what the JH researchers found. Many of the countries farther down in the rankings have rates below 50%, and for those countries filling the bottom 25 slots, none of them even reach a rate that is a third of the population in terms of contraceptive use – which of course in most cases has to do with availability, not choice. Wonderfully, the Gates Foundation yesterday announced that they would be donating $1 billion to increase the access to contraceptives in developing countries.

Also of note, and in relation to maternal and newborn health, is a new study recently published by Mailman researchers that showed PEPFAR funded programs in sub-Saharan Africa increased access to healthcare facilities for women (particularly important for this region, as 50% of maternal deaths occur there), thereby increasing the number of births occurring in these facilities – reducing the avoidable (and sometimes inevitable) complications from labor and delivery, decreasing the chance of infection and increasing treatment if contracted. This has clear implications for children as well (and why I think this study relates to the National Post infographic and the NY Times article), since newborns are also able to be assessed by trained healthcare workers and potentially life-threatening conditions averted – including HIV, if the newborns have HIV+ mothers and need early anti-retroviral treatment and a relationship with a healthcare worker and system. And it goes without saying that if a new mother is struggling with post-delivery healthcare issues, including abscesses and fistulas, or was dealing with a high-risk pre-labor condition like preeclampsia, the child will have an increasingly difficult early life, perhaps even a motherless one.

Related articles

• The Best And Worst Places In The World To Be A Woman (fastcoexist.com)
• Maternal health: India likely to miss milennium goals, says UN (thehindu.com)
• Contraceptive Use Averts 272,000 Maternal Deaths Worldwide (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Mothers lose out (thehindu.com)
• 100,000 Women’s Lives Could Be Saved By Expanded Access To Contraception (thinkprogress.org)
• Rich countries pledge $2.6bn for family planning in global south (guardian.co.uk)
• Melinda Gates challenges Vatican by vowing to improve contraception (guardian.co.uk)
• Fulfilling Contraception Needs Could Lower Maternal Mortality Drastically, Study Says (nytimes.com)
• Maternal Mortality Rates Could Tank If We Meet Contraception Needs in Developing Countries [Contraception] (jezebel.com)

Nursing Trauma: How One Church is Going After Chicago’s Violence Epidemic

Gunshot wound victim makes it to the trauma center at Valley Care Hospital (Photo credit: ffsetla)

This is one response to how to lower the high murder rate rate in Chicago (5,056 since 2001). The author believes that many victims of violence react with shock in much the same manner as soldiers with PTSD. These victims will most likely grow up angry with greater potential to use violence to solve problems unless they are worked with, much like returning soldiers from a war zone.

The blog post Nursing Trauma: How One Church is Going After Chicago’s Violence Epidemic may be found here.

Excerpts

The Real Problem: Trauma

I spent a summer in the ER of a Level 1 trauma center in Chicago. Gunshot victims would come in, and they couldn’t believe what had happened to them. It was traumatic in the truest sense – their bodies were broken and put into shock. But their mind and spirit were as well: it was a jarring experience all around for them. But not only for them. Mothers and aunties and cousins and baby mommas were going crazy too. A light bulb turned on: This situation is traumatic for them too! They need care as well.

And so the idea of “care” was expanding from physical to psycho-spiritual, and from patient to family. Everybody involved was a victim of trauma here.

I began to look into this idea of “trauma” and found that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the result of unfettered moments of shock that continue to reside in the body: the brain and body never return to “normal,” and will erupt in erratic behavior. Think of a geyser here. Hot springs are the result of spontaneous combustion of something that happened in a river far away and a long time ago. What if this is true with humans?

We already know it is. One study on inner-city kids in Chicago showed that children who were exposed to violence or witness a violent act were much more likely to demonstrate aggressive behavior within one year of exposure. PTSD also carries symptoms of depression, which contribute to feelings of meaninglessness in self and the world (thus devaluing another human life enough to take it). This is all very scientific and I want to get to the point:

Our children are being put into shock every single day.

They are experiencing violence as perpetrator, victim, and witness, and they are no less exposed to the trauma. The trauma of being poor….

One Real Solution

Chicago has been called a “warzone” – let’s play with that a moment. Maybe the best thing a small church can do to stop the violence is work with our children like we work with our returning soldiers. (We need to do this better as well). Vets need safe space to talk. They need to give voice to experiences and be able to create new ways of understanding themselves—it’s called moving from “soldier” to “human” again.

Our children need to understand themselves not as black or poor orat-risk but as HUMAN first. They need to develop meaning to confront the meaninglessness that surrounds them. This angry and dark world is traumatic for children, and they will grow up angry and dark unless we help them process what they have seen. Finding one’s own voice is critical to meaning-making. Some of them are not soldiers, but they are all in the war.

Related articles

• Embattled Childhood: The Real Trauma in PTSD (psychologicalscience.org)
• The Psychology of Resilience (psychologicalscience.org)
• Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga: An Interview with David Emerson. (elephantjournal.com)
• The legacy of childhood trauma (beyondmeds.com)
• The Road to Recovery – Promoting Resiliency in First Responders, and Others Who Witness Trauma on a Regular Basis (downwindwalk.wordpress.com)
• June is National Post Traumatic Stress Month (jeanettebartha.wordpress.com)

Database Is One-Stop Resource on Kids’ Medications

From an FDA Consumer Update

When adults are advised by their health care professional to use a medication, they expect to receive information—backed up by data from studies—on the correct and safe dose to take. For drugs used in children, this information may not be available because historically not all products are studied in children.

To fix this situation, Congress passed legislation to increase pediatric studies and incorporate the resulting information in labeling. This is a key point because medicines often affect children differently from the way they work in adults.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been working hard on this project. To make it easier for parents and health care professionals to find information on pediatric medications, the FDA created a database that covers medical products studied in children under recent pediatric legislation.

The Pediatric Labeling Information Database is a one-stop resource. You can search for information by the product’s commercial or chemical name, or by the condition for which it was studied. FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics (OPT), which focuses on safety, scientific, and ethical issues that arise in pediatric clinical trials or after products are approved for use in children, developed the tool in collaboration with another branch of the agency, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

The conundrum between maturity and ADHD

Symptoms of ADHD described by the literature (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve often wondered if populations and sub-populations can be over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed.
At times this can happen with good intentions, sometimes I fear for the sake of profit….

From the 10 April posting by MATTHEW TOOHEY, MD at KevinMD.com

A recent Canadian study showed that the youngest children in each grade (born in the earliest month of the Canadian grade cutoff: December) were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest children (born in January). For girls, who overall have a lower incidence of ADHD, the difference was even more pronounced: 70%.

Interestingly, the overall rate of ADHD diagnosis in the sampling of children from this Canadian study (900,000 children) was 6.9% for boys and 2.2% for girls. Rates of diagnosis here in the United States are much higher, creeping up on 10% of all children.

What does all of this mean? Well, you can look at this data many different ways, depending on your point of view and feelings about ADHD, but it stresses to me what seems to be common sense: many factors play into our expectations of what normal behavior should be.  It is often the school which prompts parents to have their child evaluated for attention problems and this comes from a comparison to other children in the class. A six year old may be significantly less mature or able to stay on task than a seven year old. Likewise, boys tend to have more trouble with the expectations of the school environment than girls in the younger grades….

Related articles

• Are kids being diagnosed with ADHD just for being young? [Medicine] (io9.com)
• Is Immaturity Being Mistaken for ADHD? (children.webmd.com)
• Youngest kids in classroom more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD: UBC study (news.nationalpost.com)
• Legal Drug-Pushing: How Disease Mongers Keep Us All Doped Up – John-Manuel Andriote – Health – The Atlantic (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Current psychiatric drugs are only marginally effective(jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest Are Disguised
  (jflahiff.wordpress.com)

Research shows 50 years of motherhood manuals set standards too high for new moms

From the press release of the University of Warwick

New research at the University of Warwick into 50 years of motherhood manuals has revealed how despite their differences they have always issued advice as orders and set unattainably high standards for new mums and babies.

Angela Davis, from the Department of History at the University of Warwick, carried out 160 interviews with women of all ages and from all backgrounds to explore their experiences of motherhood for her new book, Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, 1945-2000.

She spoke to women about the advice given by six childcare ‘experts’ who had all published popular books on the best way to raise a baby. Ranging from the 1940s to 2000, the authors were Frederick Truby King, John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Benjamin Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford.

Dr Davis found although the advice from these experts changed over the decades, the one thing that didn’t change was the way it was delivered. Whatever the message for mothers, it was given as an order with a threat of dire consequences if mother or child failed to behave as expected.

Dr Davis said: “Despite all the differences in advice advocated by these childcare ‘bibles’ over the years, it is interesting that they all have striking similarities in terms of how the experts presented their advice. Whatever the message, the advice was given in the form of an order and the authors highlighted extreme consequences if mothers did not follow the methods of childrearing that they advocated.

“Levels of behaviour these childcare manuals set for mothers and babies are often unattainably high, meaning women could be left feeling like failures when these targets were not achieved. Therefore while women could find supportive messages within childcare literature, some also found the advice more troubling.”

During her research Dr Davis often spoke to women who were different generations of the same family. She found when reflecting back upon the changes that they had seen from when they were babies, to when they had their own children, and then watching their children raise their own families, they were still unsure of what had really been the best approach.

Dr Davis said: “I was struck by the cyclical nature of these childcare bibles, we start out with quite strict rules laid down by Frederick Truby King, whose influence is very much evident in the 1940s and following decades. The principal thread running through his books are that babies need strict routines. We then find the advice becomes less authoritarian and regimented as we go through the decades and the influences of Bowlby, Winnicott, Spock and Leach.

“However, when we reach the 1990s when Gina Ford came to prominence, we come back to the strict regimented approach of Frederick Truby King several decades earlier. More than 50 years on and experts still cannot agree on the best way to approach motherhood, and all this conflicting advice just leaves women feeling confused and disillusioned.”

 

Experts eye link between student health troubles, lower performing schools | charterstarter

Experts eye link between student health troubles, lower performing schools | charterstarter

Excerpt from the  blog item

By Pat Tarantino at the Dorchester Reporter

About 250 people gathered Tuesday morning at the Boston Public Library’s central branch in Copley Square to discuss a new report that details the health of students in the city’s public school system. Boston Public School representatives and public health researchers hope that a new approach to the well-being of students can help even the academic playing field and give struggling learners the boost they need to close achievement gaps.

The annual Healthy Connections report, released this week, indicates students living in Boston experience significantly less physical activity, more incidents of violence, and higher rates of sexually transmitted illnesses than statewide averages. The conversation was made more urgent because a $2 million federal grant for health and wellness programs will conclude at the end of the current school year….

Read the entire post

Related articles

• Boston To Look At Health Vs. School Performance (boston.cbslocal.com)

The Ability To Love Takes Root In Earliest Infancy

From the 26 December Medical News Today article

The ability to trust, love, and resolve conflict with loved ones starts in childhood – way earlier than you may think. That is one message of a new review of the literature inCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. “Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behavior in romantic relationships 20 years later,” says psychologist Jeffry A. Simpson, the author, with University of Minnesota colleagues W. Andrew Collins and Jessica E. Salvatore. “Before you can remember, before you have language to describe it, and in ways you aren’t aware of, implicit attitudes get encoded into the mind,” about how you’ll be treated or how worthy you are of love and affection.

While those attitudes can change with new relationships, introspection, and therapy, in times of stress old patterns often reassert themselves. The mistreated infant becomes the defensive arguer; the baby whose mom was attentive and supportive works through problems, secure in the goodwill of the other person…

…The good news: “If you can figure out what those old models are and verbalize them,” and if you get involved with a committed, trustworthy partner, says Simpson, “you may be able to revise your models and calibrate your behavior differently.” Old patterns can be overcome. A betrayed baby can become loyal. An unloved infant can learn to love.

 

Read the entire Medical News Today article

 

 

Related articles

• The ability to love takes root in earliest infancy (eurekalert.org)
• The ability to love takes root in earliest infancy (medicalxpress.com)
• Ability to love begins from earliest infancy (news.bioscholar.com)
• The ability to love takes root in earliest infancy (esciencenews.com)
• Are We Born Into Trauma? (psychologytoday.com)