The California Medical Association has endorsed Sacramento pediatrician Dr. Richard Pan for the 5th Assembly District. As a long-time pediatrician and educator in the Sacramento community, Dr. Pan has been a tireless advocate for providing health care for children and families in California. “As a pediatrician serving many of the neediest families in [...] Read more »

Today’s state round-up includes coverage of uninsured children in Dallas, the Massachusetts state budget and a Medicaid rate cut in Louisiana. Read The Full Article…State Watch: Uninsured Kids In Dallas, Louisiana Medicaid Rates Cut, Massachusetts Feeling Squeezed Read more »

At a U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, “[h]ealth ministers from around the world have agreed that swift action must be taken to reduce the number of women dying during pregnancy and childbirth,” the BBC reports. While there appeared to be some agreement “that family planning was the most cost-effective way of [...] Read more »

Results from a breakthrough study, conducted by researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, show that gene therapy has restored significant vision in five children and seven adults who were previously blind. The Foundation Fighting Blindness funded the clinical trial and has been the long standing [...] Read more »

New research being presented at an obesity conference this week found that the cereals that are most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to American children as young as 2 were also the least healthy. The study, reported in The Cereal Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score (FACTS) [...] Read more »

When do you first leave the nest? Early in development infants of many species experience important transitions-such as learning when to leave the protective presence of their mother to start exploring the wider world. Neuroscientists have now pinpointed molecular events occurring in the brain during that turning point. Read The Full Article…Changes In Brain Chemicals [...] Read more »

The least healthy breakfast cereals are those most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to children as young as age two, finds a new study from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The researchers’ evaluation of cereal marketing, the first such study of its kind, shows pervasive targeting of children across all media [...] Read more »

The number of diagnoses of Down’s syndrome has increased by almost three quarters (71%) from 1989/90 to 2007/08, largely due to the considerable increase in the number of older mothers over this period. However, the number of babies born with this condition during the same period fell by 1% because of antenatal screening and subsequent [...] Read more »

Research published today on bmj.com reports that the number of diagnoses of Down’s syndrome has increased by almost 71 percent from 1989-90 to 2007-08. This is mostly due to the considerable increase in the number of elder mothers over this period. Yet during the same period, the number of babies born with this condition fell [...] Read more »

A new nationally representative study suggests that millions of children in the US between the ages of 1 and 11 don’t have enough vitamin D, and that non-whites, such as black and Hispanic children are especially at risk. Read The Full Article…New Study Suggests Millions Of American Kids May Not Have Enough [...] Read more »