It's only natural to for adults to worry about children's health and well-being at school, on the roads and even online.
But adults' No. 1 health concern for children and adolescents in the United States, It's smoking, according to new results from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. Drug abuse ranked No. 2.
The poll, which asked adults to rate 17 different health problems for children living in their communities, also found that childhood obesity now ranks among the public's top three concerns for children's health, ahead of alcohol abuse and teen pregnancy.
Also making the public's overall list of top10 health concerns for kids: Driving accidents, Internet safety, school violence, sexually transmitted infections, and abuse and neglect. The child health issues that didn't make the top 10 list, but were still rated as “big problems” by 6 to 18 percent of adults: Psychological stress, depression, eating disorders, suicide, autism, childhood cancer and food contamination.
“We found that major race/ethnicity groups differ when it comes to the top three health concerns for children as well. While white adults list smoking, drug abuse and alcohol abuse at their top three concerns, black adults rate teen pregnancy, smoking and drug abuse, and Hispanic adults rank smoking, drug abuse and childhood obesity as the three major health problems for children,” says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the National Poll on Children's Health, part of the U-M Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the Child Health Evaluation and Research (CHEAR) Unit in the U-M Division of General Pediatrics.
To rank the public's top health concerns for children, the National Poll on Children's Health, in collaboration with Knowledge Networks, Inc., conducted a national online survey in March 2007. The survey, administered to a random sample of 2,076 adults who are a part of Knowledge Network's online KnowledgePanelSM, revealed the top 10 out of 17 health concerns for children in the U.S.
Top 10 overall health concerns for children in the U.S.