Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing has received a $4.1 million federal grant to develop ways to improve the early growth and development of premature infants who have two or more social-environmental risks such as poverty or minority status.”Approximately half a million premature infants are born each year in the United States,” said Rosemary White-Traut, head of maternal-child nursing at UIC and principal investigator of the five-year study.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry strongly urges Congress to override President Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (H.R. 976) act. The House passed the S-CHIP bill by a 265-159 margin. This vote margin is not large enough to override the President’s veto. The Senate passed the measure by a 67-29 margin.

The California Medical Association criticized President Bush’s veto of a bill to extend health coverage to children, calling the move a huge setback for access to health care for millions of children. The congressional bill called for increased tobacco taxes to fund an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), allocating $60 billion over five years to cover an estimated 9 million to 10 million children, an increase from about 6 million now enrolled.

“APHA is deeply troubled that, despite overwhelming support from the general public and congressional leadership of both parties, President Bush vetoed the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which would have provided 10 million children access to health care.”We are dismayed by the president’s misguided spending priorities, which fail to invest in protecting the health of our children.”However, we don’t believe that the fight is over.

Research by an international health team, including a University of Queensland academic, shows the rate of decline of global child mortality has not improved from three decades ago. In an article published in The Lancet last month, UQ School of Population Health’s Professor Alan Lopez analysed current and past data to create a more accurate child mortality forecast to 2015.

New York City’s infant mortality rate — widely regarded as a barometer of a population’s general health — fell slightly in 2006, the Health Department reported. The rate in 2006 was 5.9 infant deaths for every 1,000 births, down from 6.0 the previous year. The City has made major progress in reducing infant deaths since the early 1990s, when the rate was double what it is today, but the decline has leveled off in recent years.

Some 20 to 40 percent of extremely premature infants suffer abnormal lung development leading to bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disease that can cause long-term breathing problems. Little is known about how to predict whether a premature infant will develop BPD in the weeks after birth, much less how to prevent or treat it. Now, gene-chip studies of these tiny babies’ umbilical cords provide unexpected, much-needed leads into predicting and treating this debilitating condition.