Children's Health Matters is a column that shares the latest reporting, research, commentary and ideas on pediatric health and child development; prevention models to reduce health disparities for ill children and children born into poverty; links between maternal and children’s health; and broader trends in children's health and well-being.
While health disparities are often framed as a social justice issue, the director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions told the 2013 National Health Journalism Fellows that maintaining such disparities is expensive as well.
Poverty can have disastrous impacts on children’s health and chances of success. Medical providers help by emphasizing to parents of at-risk children the overarching importance their voice, attention and face time play in their baby's life.
Nationwide, about four percent of grandchildren are in the care of their grandparents, a figure that jumps upwards of seven percent in states such as Louisiana and Mississippi.
Obesity has been very much in the news this week after the American Medical Association voted to label the condition a disease, a move that could eventually pave the way for expanded insurance coverage of treatments and further raise public awareness of a condition that affects about one in three Am
Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child floats a two-generation pronged theory for improving childhood development.
These centers help tackle challenges that traditional primary care hasn’t been able to address. Services most in-demand by students in underserved neighborhoods are behavioral health, reproductive health and health education.
Some headlines earlier this week made it sound like the reigning orthodoxy of exclusive breast-feeding was crumbling. The actual study turns out to be quite a bit more narrow and nuanced than the headlines let on.
Researchers who have studied the disparity in educational achievement between rich and poor children over the last few decades have found more affluent children trump their peers before the first day of preschool.
A growing body of evidence suggests that preschool can make a big difference on a child’s later success and well-being. But not everyone agrees. We look at the research as President Obama calls for major investments in early education.
