Julia A. McMillan, MD

The medical home is a familiar concept to pediatricians. In recent years its definition has been made more formal and more comprehensive, but it is nearly always linked to an environment of primary care in the outpatient setting.

Even in the pre-Prevnar, pre-conjugated Hib vaccine era, urinary tract infection was the most common bacterial infection found in infants who presented with fever without localizing clinical findings.

On May 30, 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg caused an early summer commotion when he suggested that New York ban sodas and other sugary drinks in containers of more than 16 ounces sold in outlets other than grocery and convenience stores. Mayor Bloomberg was lampooned as acting more like a nanny than a mayor.

The American Academy of Pediatrics Web site states that the AAP is "an organization of 60,000 pediatricians committed to the optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults."

Considerations regarding the effects of sunshine on health seem to fall roughly along generational lines.

An editorial that examines the current status of H1N1 in the medical setting.

An editorial that examines the prominence of pediatric metabolic syndrome over the last few years.

Editorial discusses what makes a future pediatrician.

Dr. McMillan tells of two infants for whom medicine offers no cures, and no treatments.

Contemporary Pediatrics' editor addresses issue of communicating electronically with patients.

President-elect Barack Obama's health care plan promises improved access to health care for children.

A discussion of the problems associated with the new CDC recommendations for immunizing children with the flu vaccine.

How the Internet can teach us a thing or two about comprehensive health care for children.

If the promise of new vaccines, such as Gardasil, is to be achieved, pediatricians and family physicians must be relieved of the burdens associated with purchasing and administering them.

This season, pediatric offices and clinics will work to meet the challenges posed by the new influenza vaccination.

Regulatory bodies have demanded more rigorous assessment of medical providers.

What's the motivation behind the increasing pressure on deans and department chairs to increase diversity among students, trainees, and faculty members?

With the recent licensing of conjugated, quadrivalent meningococcal vaccine (MCV4) and likely approval of other "childhood" vaccines to prevent disease during adolescence and adulthood, the national immunization program ventures onto new ground.

On October 5, 2004, the United States learned that only half the anticipated doses of influenza vaccine would be available in preparation for the upcoming flu season because Chiron Vaccines, one of only two manufacturers of inactivated influenza vaccine, had its license to manufacture Fluvirin suspended. This may be the most abrupt and untimely interruption of the vaccine supply we have experienced but, as health-care providers for children well know, it isn't the first.

It has been difficult to determine the impact of influenza infection on infants and young children, because annual outbreaks of respiratory syncytial virus infection often overlap influenza outbreaks. But careful epidemiologic tests, combined with accurate, simple-to-perform viral diagnostic studies, have now clearly demonstrated that young children--particularly those younger than 2 years--are hospitalized because of influenza at a rate that equals or exceeds the influenza hospitalization rate for the elderly.

Keeping track of changes in immunization recommendations is the best way to be certain that our patients receive maximal benefit.