Dear Parents,

I am writing to ask your input on story lines we are developing for programs for “Can Do” Street that combat obesity before it becomes an issue for a child, not after he or she develops a serious weight problem.

We want to begin our obesity prevention programs by targeting young children who are learning to make food choices based on what is prepared for them wherever they are at mealtime or snack time.

Please share how you influence your child’s food choices, so that more often than not, he or she chooses healthy foods over high caloric and /or fatty foods.

What methods do you use for encouraging your child to make healthy choices when choosing from a restaurant menu or ordering in a fast food place?

Do you talk to you child about foods that are always good to eat and foods that need to be a sometime treat, not for every day?

Do you involve your child in meal prep and grocery shopping? If so, do you use this time to talk about how the foods you are buying or preparing will help them to grow strong and fit?

Please email me at jeanc@candostreet.com with what works for you.

If you have a particular area that you have dealt with successfully, such as a picky eater, please share how you have gotten them to make healthier food choices.

I look forward to hearing from you. I welcome any and all suggestions that can help with getting programs out there to prevent obesity.

Best,

Jean

There is a movement in the U. S. for parents to opt out of having their young children vaccinated.

Twenty states currently allow “personal belief exemptions” when it comes to having a child vaccinated: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued findings that with more kids not being vaccinated, the United States is now experiencing its largest measles outbreak in 15 years. Experts have also blamed a recent resurgence in cases of whooping cough (pertussis), especially in California, on fewer children being vaccinated.

A new study finds that at some schools in California, where parents can opt out of having their children vaccinated, one out of every five kindergarten students is not vaccinated.  This puts those not vaccinated at risk of preventable infectious diseases, as well as other children at the school.

These are schools “where we might be concerned that ‘herd immunity’ has been compromised,” warned lead study author Alison Buttenheim, an assistant professor in family and community health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

“Herd immunity is the protection offered to unimmunized people when most people are immunized or otherwise unsusceptible,” she explained. “For example, our herd immunity against measles protects infants, up to age 1, who are too young to receive the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] shot.”

Dr. Buttenheim added that “schools are an important site of exposure for children. All of our measures point to increasing exposure to intentionally  not vaccinated children among California kindergarteners, a worrisome trend.”

The researchers deemed as “hot spots” schools where more than 20 of 100 children claimed personal belief exemptions.

The researchers found that in 2010, for every 100 children in a California kindergarten, 2.3 had not been vaccinated due to one or more personal belief exemptions. These exempted children tended to cluster in certain schools, typically attending schools where an average of almost 16 of every 100 of their peers also claimed exemptions.

In some schools, more than one in five kindergartners had parental exemptions for not being vaccinated, the study found.

“This looks like an important study, one that’s consistent with what we’ve been learning about philosophical and personal exemptions,” said Dr. Lance Rodewald, director of the immunization services division at the CDC. “Studies done in the past show that the easier it is to get an exemption, the more likely a child will get one. Other studies show that the easier it is to get an exemption, the lower the coverage levels.”

Rodewald said climbing exemption rates can have far-reaching consequences — even for children who get vaccinated.”It does matter for non-exempted children. While with measles vaccination, one dose gives 95 percent protection, the pertussis [whooping cough] vaccine is very good but not perfect. Pertussis wears off over time. [So] even if a child was vaccinated, it’s still possible to get pertussis,” Rodewald explained. “With a lot of exempters, you can attract an outbreak. We’re seeing a lot of pertussis right now.”

Dr. Buttenheim agreed. “Making sure your children are up to date on the recommended immunization schedule is an easy, safe and effective way to protect your child’s health,” she said. “However, no vaccine is 100 percent effective. Your vaccinated child still has a very small — but not zero — probability of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease if exposed.”

Why are parents opting out of having their children vaccinated?

According to Dr. Buttenheim “Parents choose not to have their children vaccinated for many reasons. To generalize across this diverse group, they perceive the risks associated with vaccines to be greater than the risks associated with vaccine-preventable diseases. While there is a very strong scientific consensus that this calculation is not correct, we cannot simply ignore or dismiss parental vaccine hesitancy.

One big fear that many parents have but now has been proven false,  is the fear that having their child vaccinated for measles-mumps-rubella might raise the autism risk for their child. In 1998, a small but widely publicized study appeared to link childhood MMR vaccination to nine cases of autism. The study appeared in the medical journal The Lancet, which retracted the study in 2010. In January of this year, an investigation by another leading British journal, BMJ, denounced the findings as deliberately fraudulent. But the damage was done.”

“In general, parents do value vaccines but exemptions do happen,” said Dr. Rodewald, a pediatrician with the CDC and director of their immunization services division,  “Parents have a lot of questions and they want to make sure that vaccines are effective and safe. It’s important that health professionals like pediatricians, nurse practitioners and school nurses be able to answer questions for parents so they can make informed decisions; decisions of knowledge and strength.”

For a detailed illustration of  Herd Immunity, go to http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx

SOURCES: Alison M. Buttenheim, Ph.D., assistant professor, nursing, department of family and community health, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia; Lance Rodewald, M.D., pediatrician and director, immunization services division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before you reach for a sugary drink for yourself or a member of your family think about this…drinking one 20 ounce soda a day translates to eating 50 pounds of sugar a year!

Last week New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley unveiled a new Health Department education campaign to fight obesity in NYC. “The majority of New York City adults are now overweight or obese, as are 4 in 10 elementary school children and the health consequences are staggering,” said Commissioner Farley. “Sugary drinks are the largest single source of added sugar in the diet, and a child’s risk of obesity increases with every additional daily serving of a sugary drink.”

A TV spot will air on major broadcast and cable TV stations over the next two months reminding New Yorkers about how sugary drinks can lead to obesity, which can cause diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers. This latest installment of the NYC Health Department’s “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign was launched at an event in Times Square commemorating the nation’s first Food Day, a day modeled after the popular Earth Day, but focused on healthy food and eating.

In addition to the TV spot, bilingual subway posters will ask New Yorkers to think about how far they would need to walk to burn off the calories from drinking just one sugary drink. A YouTube video shows a man taking that calorie-burning walk across town and asks, “Are You Pouring on the Pounds?”

One message of the campaign states that to burn off the 650 calories of a medium frozen vanilla coffee drink one would need to walk 8 miles. The distance is based on a 160 pound person walking 3.5 mph.

There are many healthier alternatives to a sugary drink.  The “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign encourages New Yorkers to avoid sugary beverages and quench their thirst with water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead.

Could your town or city use a “Pouring on the Pounds Campaign” that talks to the cold and hot sugary drink?

Yesterday’s “Can Do” Street kids blog introduces the idea that some children may have difficulties with reading and that there is nothing wrong with getting extra help.

The blog post plants the seed that needing help with reading is nothing to be ashamed of..that we all need help in one thing or another during our lives.

For many children developing reading skills  is a natural process. For other children,  reading is a continuous struggle. According to the National Institutes of Health, one out of every ten children has significant problems with reading skills.

An article on readingrockets.org, states that:

• Children may struggle with reading for a variety of reasons. Good readers are phonemically aware, understand the alphabetic principle, apply these skills in a rapid and fluent manner, possess strong vocabularies and syntactical and grammatical skills, and relate reading to their own experiences.

• Learning to read begins far before children enter formal schooling. Children who have stimulating literacy experiences from birth onward have an edge in vocabulary development, in understanding the goals of reading, and in developing an awareness of print and literacy concepts.

•  Children who are most at risk for reading failure enter kindergarten and the elementary grades without these early experiences. Frequently, many poor readers have not consistently engaged in the language play that develops an awareness of sound structure and language patterns. They have limited exposure to bedtime and lap time reading.

• Children raised in poverty, those with limited proficiency in English, those from homes where the parents’ reading levels and practices are low, and those with speech, language, and hearing disabilities are at increased risk of reading failure.

The article goes on to say that:

• Many children with robust oral language experience, average to above average intelligence, and frequent early interactions with literacy activities also have difficulties learning to read. Why?

• Programmatic longitudinal research, including research supported by  the national Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD), clearly indicates that deficits in the development of phoneme awareness skills not only predict difficulties learning to read, but they also have a negative effect on reading acquisition. Whereas phoneme awareness is necessary for adequate reading development, it is not sufficient. Children must also develop phonics concepts and apply these skills fluently in text.

•  Substantial research supports the importance of phoneme awareness, phonics, and the development of speed and automaticity in reading. Unfortunately, we know less about how children develop reading comprehension strategies and semantic and syntactic knowledge. Given that some children with well developed decoding and word- recognition abilities have difficulties understanding what they read, more research in reading comprehension is crucial.

In an article appearing in the NYU Child Study Center newsletter,  Anita Gurian, Ph.D, speaks to the importance of parents being involved in their children’s education and beginning that involvement in the elementary school years.

Dr Gurian cites research studies, which demonstrate the children of involved parents:

• are absent less frequently
• behave better
• do better academically from pre-school through high school
• go farther in school
• go to better schools

She goes on to say that additional research also shows that a home environment that encourages learning is even more important than parents’ income, education level, or cultural background. By actively being involved in their child’s education at home and in school, parents send some critical messages to their child; they’re demonstrating their interest in his/her activities and reinforcing the idea that school is important.

In today’s world where both parents need to work, carving out time, even a brief amount of time for being involved in their child’s education is a challenge. If parents can manage to do so, it will be time that generates rewards for both parents and children.

The National Education Association ( NEA) recommends the following ways to be involved with your child’s education at home:

• Read to your child — reading aloud is the most important activity that parents can do to increase their child’s chance of reading success
• Discuss the books and stories you read to your child
• Help your child organize his/her time
• Limit television viewing on school nights
• Talk to your child regularly about what’s going on in school
• Check homework every night (more…)