All-Terrain Vehicle Injuries Rise
Hospitalizations for children injured in all-terrain vehicles rose 150% during 1997-2006, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Rates rose most dramatically in the South and Midwest and among teens aged 15-17, according to a Journal of Trauma report. Boys still had the highest rate of injury, but girls aged 15-17 saw a 250% increase in ATV-related hospitalizations. “All-terrain vehicles are inherently dangerous to children,” lead author Stephen Bowman, Ph.D., said in a statement. “While manufacturers are required to label vehicles with engine sizes greater than 90 cc as inappropriate for children younger than 16, our data [suggest] that parents are unaware of these recommendations or are choosing to ignore them.” The researchers chose the 9-year period to probe ATV-related hospitalizations after the 1998 expiration of a consent decree governing ATV sales in which the industry had agreed to reduce the risk of injury by offering free driver training, labeling vehicles with warnings, conducting a nationwide information campaign, and using other measures.
Top Calorie Sources Are Junk Food
More than 40% of total energy consumed by children aged 2-18 years comes from “empty calories” in the form of fat and added sugar, according to National Institutes of Health researchers. Children consume more calories from cookies, cake, pizza, and soda than from other food sources: On average, children got 138 calories each day from grain-based desserts, 136 calories a day from pizza, and 118 calories a day from sugar-sweetened soda. The report, from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data, is in the October issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. “The landscape of choices available to children and adolescents must change to provide fewer unhealthy foods and more healthy foods with less energy,” the researchers wrote.
HHS Tries to Ensure Insurance
The Department of Health and Human Services has outlined how states can ensure health coverage for all children despite their health status. Some insurers have stopped offering new child-only policies in what the HHS said is an effort to avoid covering some children with preexisting conditions. In a letter to state insurance commissioners, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that companies may – if state laws allow – charge higher premiums when enrolling already-ill children, limit enrollment to preset periods of the year, and impose surcharges on families who drop child coverage and later reapply for it. However, Ms. Sebelius said that insurers may not enroll healthy children while refusing sick children, according to the promise that insurance companies recently made to the HHS.
HHS Funds Special Needs Centers
The HHS will provide $3.9 million to continue support for Family-to-Family Health Information Centers. The nonprofit centers provide information, education, training, outreach, and peer support among families with special needs children and offer some services to health professionals. “This program is a model for effective collaboration between families and health care professionals,” Health Resources and Services Administrator Mary Wakefield said in a statement. With the funds from the Affordable Care Act, centers in 40 states and the District of Columbia will be able to operate through 2012. Centers in the remaining 10 states received such funding last year.
Costs Prevent Some Kids' Care
About one in six parents surveyed said that it's become more difficult to obtain health care for their children, even though all had public or private health insurance. About 13% of parents said that within the past year, they couldn't comply with at least one recommendation from a health professional because of its cost. About 5% said their children failed to see a recommended specialist or get a lab test, and nearly 9% didn't fill a prescription because they couldn't pay for it. Parents who said they have had increasing difficulty getting needed care for their children were more likely to have private rather than public insurance and to have middle incomes ($15,000-$34,999) rather than higher or lower incomes. The researchers at Wright State University, Xenia, Ohio, reported their findings at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
NIH Funds Resistance Research
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has okayed four new contracts for large clinical trials designed to address the problem of antimicrobial resistance. The trials will evaluate alternatives to antibiotics as treatments for diseases such as acute otitis media, community-acquired pneumonia, and gram-negative bacteria infections, which frequently resist first-line antibiotics. The new trials are part of a two-pronged government approach to antimicrobial research: learning how to protect the usefulness of available drugs while facilitating the development of new antibiotics.