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More pediatric subspecialists entering private practice could mean fewer at academic centers

An increasing number of pediatric subspecialists are entering private practice, a trend that could mean a smaller proportion working at academic centers, conducting research, teaching or advancing specialty care, a University of Michigan study finds.

13 Sep 2011

New contraceptive website for young women

Friends, the mainstream media and the internet, all potentially unreliable sources, continue to be the way America's young adults find their health information. Research has found that while they trust health professionals and health educators, they often do not turn to them for information, especially when it comes to their sexual health.

13 Sep 2011

Parents of teens underestimate own teens' substance use

The latest C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health from the University of Michigan finds that few parents (10 percent) believe their own teens, ages 13 to 17 years old, have used alcohol in the last year and even fewer (5 percent) believe their own teens have used marijuana in the last year.

12 Sep 2011

Non-communicable disease epidemic a global problem

Later this month the United Nations will convene a high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases. The world's global health news has been so dominated by infectious culprits - HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza - that it's easy to forget just how big a toll conditions like diabetes, cancer and heart and lung disease take say experts.

9 Sep 2011

Hasbro Children's Hospital joins Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network

The emergency medicine department at Hasbro Children's Hospital has received a grant that will support its participation in the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN). This is the nation's first federally funded pediatric research network focused on the prevention and management of acute illnesses and injuries in children of all ages.

8 Sep 2011

HSPH receives Gates Foundation grant to improve maternal health in developing countries

A new three-year, $12 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support a Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) effort to significantly improve maternal health in developing countries.

8 Sep 2011

Save the Children index measures reach of health care workers, ranks best and worst countries for child health

A new index released Tuesday by Save the Children measures the nationwide reach of health workers and ranks the best and worst countries for a child to fall sick in, with Chad and Somalia at the bottom and Switzerland and Finland at the top, according to a Save the Children press release.

8 Sep 2011

London scientist hopes to improve diagnosis for Jeune syndrome

A London scientist is hoping a new study funded by children's charity Action Medical Research, will help to improve diagnosis and work towards new treatments for a rare, incurable genetic disorder called Jeune syndrome.

7 Sep 2011

WHO African region member states have challenges to meet MDGs, WHO/AFRO Director says

Speaking at the 61st session of the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire, on Thursday, African Regional Director of WHO Luis Sambo said "that 46 Africa member countries still had remarkable challenges to scale before meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," Nigeria's The Nation reports.

3 Sep 2011

Tempo of puberty linked to anxiety, depression

Children who go through puberty at a faster rate are more likely to act out and to suffer from anxiety and depression, according to a study by researchers at Penn State, Duke University and the University of California, Davis. The results suggest that primary care providers, teachers and parents should look not only at the timing of puberty in relation to kids' behavior problems, but also at the tempo of puberty -- how fast or slow kids go through puberty.

2 Sep 2011

Family planning can improve maternal and child health, survival

Describing a maternal health program that promotes family planning in the rural village of Bweremana in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Michael Gerson writes in his Washington Post column that "the very words 'family planning' light up the limbic centers of American politics."

31 Aug 2011

Severe combined immunodeficiency treated successfully with gene therapy

Gene therapy can offer a cure for a rare condition that causes children’s immune systems to fail. In this rare condition, known as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), inherited genetic mutations mean that babies are unable to fight off infection, severely limiting their chances of surviving more than a few years. Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is a rare genetic disorder estimated to affect between 1 in 200,000 and 1 in 1,000,000 live births

26 Aug 2011

Implementation of maternal and child health innovations important

In a Huffington Post opinion piece, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah writes about the Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge in Development competition, which "called for groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant mothers and newborns around the time of birth in rural settings."

25 Aug 2011

USAID helps improve maternal, child health care at Pakistani hospital

This post in the State Department's "DipNote" blog looks at Fatima Jinnah Women's Hospital, "one of more than 80 Pakistani medical facilities that the United States has helped renovate in recent years in Pakistan" and describes how medical personnel at the facility "demonstrated the benefits that new equipment and training opportunities have made to their standard of care on Thursday, August 18, as U.S. Agency for International Development Mission Director Andrew Sisson toured the facility."

23 Aug 2011

Prenatal smoking affects early neurological development in babies

In one of the largest studies of its kind to date, researchers have found that babies born to mothers who smoke while pregnant face substantial delays in early neurological development, and the effects may be stronger than researchers had previously thought.

23 Aug 2011

NHLBI selects U-M Congenital Heart Center for clinical research

The University of Michigan Congenital Heart Center has been selected as a new Pediatric Heart Network core site for clinical research. Created and funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, the Pediatric Heart Network is a cooperative network of pediatric cardiovascular clinical research centers that conducts studies in children with congenital or acquired heart disease.

20 Aug 2011

Waist circumference does not effectively predict children with increased risk of diabetes

Waist circumference, a measure of belly fat, is not a better predictor than body mass index for identifying children with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a study by University of Michigan researchers.

20 Aug 2011

First 5 LA awards Valley Presbyterian Hospital $500,000 to improve breastfeeding rates

First 5 LA announced today that it is awarding a grant of nearly $500,000 to Valley Presbyterian Hospital to improve the nutrition and health of the hospital's youngest patients by developing and maintaining policies and procedures to encourage increased breastfeeding among mothers of newborns.

19 Aug 2011

Multi-country study of severe pneumonia in hospitalized children

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health announced on Tuesday the launch of "a groundbreaking new study called the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) study … a large multi-country case-control study of severe pneumonia in hospitalized children under five years of age … being conducted in Bangladesh, The Gambia, Kenya, Mali, South Africa, Thailand, and Zambia," according to a JHSPH press release.

18 Aug 2011

Milk helps children to stay hydrated during exercise than water

Active children need to be watered with milk. It's a more effective way of countering dehydration than a sports drink or water itself, say researchers at McMaster University.

18 Aug 2011