News

Although overweight/obese Latino adolescents and their parents generally recognize that sugar-sweetened beverages are not healthy, the teenagers still consume these drinks for a variety of reasons, mostly because they are available at home, a new study shows.

Hospitalized children from Spanish-speaking families are likely to stay in the hospital for a longer time in association with a serious or sentinel event after admission than English speakers.

Almost all parents prefer an informed discussion about the risks of brain computed tomography before going ahead with the head imaging for their children.

Parents find both pediatrician-recommended and nonrecommended treatments for kids' nasal congestion effective.

Although tobacco use among adolescents and young adults has declined in recent years, data show that more than 3 million high school students and 600,000 middle school students still smoke cigarettes regularly. Motivational interviewing is one intervention that pediatricians can use to help their teenaged patients quit smoking before the onset of nicotine addiction and its accompanying comorbidities.

Evidence on preventive drug treatments for episodic migraines in children is limited in a number of ways, a new evidence review finds.

Debate continues on whether publicly funded providers are the answer.

If you haven’t thought about the oral health of your patients, it’s time.

Young children don’t eat enough fish and other foods containing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), particularly the n-3 ones, according to the first study to look at polyunsaturated fat consumption in children aged younger than 5 years.

Motor skills are significantly related to adaptive behavior skills in young children with autism spectrum disorders, according to a recent study, suggesting that focusing on motor skills development should be part and parcel of early intervention programs.

More than one-third of all high school seniors report binge drinking at a level of 5 to 15 or more alcoholic drinks in a single sitting at some point during the previous 2 weeks.

Although cases of child abuse are declining, incidences of child neglect may be rising. and most of the perpetrators in both cases are the children’s own parents.

The good news is that in 2012, vaccination coverage of children aged 19 to 35 months remained near or above Healthy People 2020 target levels, according to the US National Immunization Survey, 2008-2012.

The use of algorithms integrated into electronic health records (EHRs) in the primary care setting better detects growth disorders in children than traditional monitoring of linear growth, according to a new population-based cohort study.

Many commercially available baby foods are targeted to infants as young as 4 months, an age at which experts say infants should still be exclusively breastfed. Furthermore, many of these foods are nutritionally inferior to breast milk, are no more energy-dense than formula, and contain sugar, which may lure children away from the breast and toward a lifelong preference for sweets.

A recent survey shows that physicians mention the importance of sunscreen least often to children. In fact, the survey indicates that physicians aren’t mentioning sunscreen that much to anyone, but when they do, it’s most often to white patients in their eighties and not to kids or teenagers.

The birth rate for teenagers in the United States continued to fall in 2012, reaching 29.4 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 years, which represents a 6% decrease from 2011 and a historic low for the nation, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Almost 40% of adults (and not just parents) across the United States rate obesity as their number 1 health concern for today’s children, according to the 7th annual National Poll on Children’s Health conducted by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

During 2011-2012, the percentage of students in grades 6 to 12 who ever used electronic or e-cigarettes doubled from 3.3% to 6.8%, meaning that as of 2012, an estimated 1.78 million middle and high school students have at least tried the largely unregulated devices, according to results from the National Youth Tobacco Survey.

A girl who consumes 1 alcoholic drink per day between her first menstrual cycle and her first full-term pregnancy increases her risk of proliferative benign breast disease (BBD) and breast cancer, says a new study.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has released its guidance for influenza vaccination during the 2013-2014 influenza season. As always, AAP recommends that all children and adolescents aged 6 months and older receive either the trivalent or quadrivalent influenza vaccine, and children should be immunized as soon as the vaccine becomes available.

A new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs says that many medicines are safe to use for breastfeeding mothers, but it cautions that the risk for babies of exposure to any drug through breast milk must be evaluated for both the importance of the medication to the mother and the benefits of breastfeeding for the infant.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has updated its recommendations for curbing tobacco use among school-aged children and adolescents.

Pediatric practices can implement a tobacco dependence intervention for parents who smoke as part of routine child health outpatient care, a new study shows.

Obamacare is here. Although the staggered implementation schedule has many health care providers unsure of how best to serve the influx of new patients, community hospitals and primary care clinics that serve our urban poor need to be ready to implement a “disruptive innovation.”

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in children is increasing, with studies showing it to be the most common liver abnormality in children aged 2 to 19 years.

Bath salts (a synthetic form of cathinone) and synthetic marijuana (synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC) are popular new designer drugs of abuse, and exposures have been reported throughout the United States.

The 2-year bump up in rates for Medicaid primary care providers under the health care reform law has run into numerous problems.