AAP Speaks Out Against Retail-based Clinics

Following closely behind the announcement that CVS is halting the sale of tobacco products and positioning itself as an integral part of the U.S. healthcare system, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is telling parents they shouldn’t take their kids to retail-based healthcare clinics.

Retail-based healthcare clinics

Sleep Champ App Helps Kids Sleep Like Champs

Lack of sleep is a national epidemic for kids today. Sleep deprivation can affect cognitive skills, health, academic achievement, and relationships. For children, getting enough sleep helps with everything from schoolwork, to behavior, to friendships, to physical wellbeing. Sometimes the problem isn’t how much, but how well, a child is sleeping. That’s where the Sleep Champ app can help.

Sleep Champ app

Oral Immunotherapy Shows Promise as Treatment for Egg Allergy

Giving children and adolescents with egg allergy small but increasing daily doses of egg white powder holds the possibility of developing into a way to enable some of them to eat egg-containing foods without having allergic reactions, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study results will appear online in the July 19th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine [1].

Consortium of Food Allergy Research (CoFAR)

Third Reported Recovery From Clinical Rabies in the U.S.

Rabies is a serious — almost always fatal — viral infection of the central nervous system. The virus is present in the saliva of infected mammals, and is most often spread via a bite wound. Raccoons, skunks, bats, foxes, and coyotes are the most common carriers of rabies in the United States, though any mammal, including domestic dogs and cats, can become infected and transmit the disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps statistics on rabies incidence in the U.S., and notes that cases are quite rare. Only one or two individuals a year become infected with the rabies virus, and prophylaxis (vaccination post-exposure, but prior to the development of symptoms) is almost always effective.

Bat

Controversial Anti-obesity Ads Aim to Reduce Childhood Obesity

A new series of billboard and television ads is outraging Georgians, who object to the “Stop Sugarcoating It, Georgia” campaign being run by the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta pediatric hospital. The ads depict overweight and obese children in a variety of settings, and are meant to shock parents into action.

Stop childhood obesity