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Safety and Prevention

Children’s Gun-Related Injuries Linked to Poverty

About 42 percent of U.S. homes have a firearm, reported a recent article. Some may be surprised the number is so high, but I think it’s a rather conservative estimate. And I think the number is increasing in light of recent court rulings such as June’s Supreme Court decision to overturn Chicago’s handgun ban. Also,

Childhood Obesity

Celebrate! And then back to work in battle against obesity

In any long, drawn out ordeal, it’s important to take time to celebrate the successes. And that’s the case in the battle against the American epidemic of childhood obesity. Some think it’s a lost cause; we do not. So we took time out last week to celebrate the passage of Ohio Senate Bill 210, also

Safety and Prevention

Kids should have health insurance NOW

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March, is already beginning to protect families from some of the pains of health insurance. When the new law is fully phased in by 2014, it will help families secure affordable health coverage that can’t be taken away when they become sick or lose their job. In

Health Care Public Policy

Sharing data can improve health care

It’s no secret that we measure just about everything at Cincinnati Children’s. We do it so we can tell how we’re doing in our quest to be the leader in improving child health. We also share the information because we believe the more people who have the knowledge, the greater the advancements we can make.

Safety and Prevention

Breaking the cycle of child abuse reduces crime

It’s insidious and often unreported, but child abuse is a scourge that haunts its victims today and into the future. It also threatens our very society. Fortunately, there is hope. And last week doctors, policemen, prosecutors and social workers came together at Cincinnati Children’s to take a stand of support for voluntary home visitation programs

Childhood Obesity

Step by step, weight issue can be tackled

Perhaps nothing has been written or talked about or wrestled with more in health care circles the past few years than obesity. For good reason. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control last week: Obesity is quickly becoming a national epidemic, and the costs to treat its related ailments is approaching $150

Research and Discoveries

Early puberty raises physical and emotional issues

The news out of Cincinnati Children’s last week that the age of onset of puberty in girls continues to decline made headlines around the world. A study by Frank Biro, MD, director of Adolescent Medicine, showed that the number of 7- and 8-year-old girls who have breast development is greater than that indicated in studies

Childhood Obesity

Obesity epidemic: ‘We literally can’t afford this’

The very thing that allowed the human species to survive in the first place is one of the things that’s killing it: our ability to store calories. Back thousands of years ago when we spent our days “hunting and gathering” our food, it was essential that we could go for hours or days without much

Whooping cough epidemic linked to people who refuse vaccines

California’s whooping cough epidemic could be the worst in 50 years. As of late July, the state reported nearly 2,200 cases of the bacterial infection, including seven deaths — all infants younger than two months. And now whooping cough is on the rise in other states, too. Why? Because people aren’t getting vaccinated. It happened

Health Care Public Policy

Health care improvement needs more doctors

The headline here seems to make intrinsic sense. After all, health care is a doctor’s world and therefore doctors would be heavily involved in the process to make it better, safer and more efficient. Right? Not always, says Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, the Director of Hospital Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s. Dr. Conway just finished a

The July Effect

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed an MSNBC.com article, “Hospitals really can be deadlier in July, study shows.” One study shows that medication errors skyrocket in July, the month after med school graduations, and thus the first month that residents are practicing in hospitals. It doesn’t have to be this way. We asked Dr.

Three Questions With Susan Laurence

There are people at Cincinnati Children’s who have jobs that many people don’t even know exist. There are others who research and/or treat conditions that most have never heard of. And there are others who are just generally amazing people who dedicate their days (and in some cases nights) to changing the outcome for kids. This new

Research and Discoveries

Parental Job Loss Leads to Kids Losing Health Coverage

Take a moment to imagine a large quantity of something – it can be anything. Got it? Ok, so how much of “something” did you imagine? One hundred? One-hundred thousand? These are both considered large quantities, yet both values pale in comparison to 15.3 million currently unemployed Americans. Now consider that the majority of these

Health Care Public Policy

Senator Brown says efforts are “woefully short”

In pediatric medical circles, we take any opportunity to remind anyone who will listen that “children are not small adults.” We make the distinction because treating children takes special care. You can’t just take adult medicine and “cut it down to size” for children. Unfortunately, when it comes to disease and treatment research, children take

Rare and Complex Conditions

“A ‘Best’ Hospital for Cystic Fibrosis Kids”

Fifty years ago, most children with cystic fibrosis died before they were 10. Many did not live long enough to see the inside of a classroom. But according to the most recent numbers available from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the median age of survival is now 37.4 years – clearly much better, but experts at

Fitness and Nutrition

HealthWorks! first summer camp a hit

Luring kids away from their video games for an entire week to learn healthier lifestyle habits can be a challenge — unless they’re going to a fun-filled camp with their peers. Summer camp is a new twist for HealthWorks!, which provides innovative programs to help overweight young people and their families improve their eating habits

Health Care Quality

‘Best choice’ Berwick named head of CMS

We’re pleased to write that today the right person has been appointed head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and will be thrust into the middle of the efforts to reshape health care in the United States. Pediatrician Donald Berwick, MD, a leading advocate of patient safety and quality improvement in health care, became

Health Care Quality

Ohio Perinatal Quality Collaborative Improves Infant Health, Controls Costs

Statewide Program Significantly Reduces Inappropriate Scheduling of Births before 39 Weeks Cincinnati Children’s News Release A statewide Ohio program significantly reduced the monthly rate of inappropriately scheduled births before 39 weeks gestation, helping to avoid expensive neonatal intensive care unit admissions and decrease the risk of infant deaths, according to two studies by the Ohio

Creating the Safest OR

Health care is risky business. And while checklists, as advocated by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book The Checklist Manifesto, are a good start in reducing medical errors, they aren’t enough. The overall mortality rate in pediatric cardiac surgery nationally remains around 3 to 4 percent – even after implementing checklists. We need to do

Health Care Quality

Overcoming Unstable Insurance Coverage for Ohio Kids with Special Health Care Needs

A third of Ohio children with special health care needs have unstable or inadequate insurance coverage despite the fact that they may qualify for government health programs. Our Child Policy Research Center has analyzed data about Ohio children with special health care needs (CSHCN). Some 445,200 children, or 16.2 percent of all Ohio children, meet

Safety and Prevention

Teen pregnancy rates encouraging but still need work

Three out of every 10 girls becomes pregnant by the age of 20, in the United States. Even more sobering, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy and births of any industrialized country: birth rates here are 1.5 times higher than the United Kingdom which has the highest rate in Europe; three times

Neighborhood-specific identification of preterm birth risks

We all know computers can do amazing things. But reduce preterm births? No way, right? Well, maybe. One of our neonatologists presented research at the annual meeting of Pediatric Academic Societies earlier this month that explains how. Through computer analysis of geographical information, our researchers have begun to identify neighborhood-specific risk factors for preterm birth.

Safety and Prevention

Child mortality rates declining

A new study in the Lancet offers good news in showing that death rates in children under 5 are dropping in many countries, according to data from 187 nations from 1970 to 2010. The study notes that 7.7 million children are expected to die this year around the world. That number is still huge, but

Health Care Public Policy

Ohio Senate passes Healthy Choices bill

The Healthy Choices for Healthy Children legislation we discussed a couple of months back (here, and here) passed in the Ohio Senate yesterday afternoon. Cincinnati Children’s and the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association have strongly supported this bill from its infancy and we are pleased it has passed this crucial vote. A companion bill is expected to

Childhood Obesity

Revolutionizing school lunches

ABC recently wrapped up a six-part primetime series called “Food Revolution” in which celebrity chef Jamie Oliver overhauled school lunches at a school system in Huntington, West Virginia, the most overweight city in the United States. A Washington Post article summarizing the level of success of the project paints a fairly rosy picture of incorporating

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