Brigham Young University issued a press release on January 16, 2014  sharing findings of a new study documenting that children who were the object of bullying during P.E. class or other physical activities were less likely to participate in physical activity one year later.

Study findings indicated that overweight or obese children who experienced teasing during physical activity had a lower perceived health-related quality of life (referring to physical, social, academic and emotional functioning) one year later. Even children with a healthy weight who were subjected to bullying during physical activity tended to exercise less often one year later. Many previous studies have already correlated bullying with decreased physical activity among kids who are obese or overweight, but it was surprising to find that the correlation didn’t end there.

“Our finding that this applies to normal-weight kids also was novel,” said Chad Jensen, a psychology professor at BYU and lead author on the study published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.

This study looked at associations between bullying, physical activity and quality of life over time, following up with the same participants after a full year.

The participants in this study were 4th and 5th grade students from six different elementary schools in the Midwest. Participants completed three surveys at the beginning of the study and then completed the same three surveys again one year later.

The first survey asked questions about problems with health and activities, emotional well-being, getting along with classmates and academic abilities. The second survey assessed teasing experiences during physical activity. The third survey asked specific situational questions to determine whether the student had been bullied during physical activity and the emotional effect it had. The questions explored experiences such as:

• Being made fun of when playing sports or exercising.
• Not being chosen to be on a sports team or other children looking or acting upset when the child was placed on the team.
• Being called insulting names when playing sports or exercising.

Study results showed a decrease in physical activity of healthy-weight students who are bullied, and a decrease in health-related quality of life for students who were overweight or obese who reported teasing in the first survey.

“Overweight kids who were teased reported poorer functional ability across domains (physical, social, academic and physical),” said Jensen. “If we can help them to have a better perception of their physical and social skills, then physical activity may increase and health-related quality is likely to improve.”

While most schools participate in comprehensive anti-bullying programs, Jensen recommends implementing policies that discourage peer victimization based on physical abilities.

“We hope our study will raise awareness that educators should consider bullying prevention during physical education and free play (recess) when kids may be discouraged from being physically active because of teasing experiences,” Jensen said.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued this bulletin on 02/05/2014 regarding child passenger safety.

Little kids and shopping carts can be a bad combination, especially if a child doesn’t understand the dangers of standing up in or trying to climb out of a cart. It only takes a few seconds, while a parent or other adult is intent on picking a product off the shelf, for an accident to happen. The following news release states that new, U.S. research finds a child is being seen in an emergency room every 22 minutes because of an injury related to shopping carts.

Falling from shopping carts caused 70 percent of the injuries, followed by running into/falling over a cart, cart tip-overs, and fingers, legs, or arms getting trapped in a cart.

The study in the January issue of Clinical Pediatrics, found that more than 500,000 children under the age of 15 were treated at emergency rooms for shopping cart-related injuries between 1990 and 2011, an average of more than 24,000 a year.

Seventy-eight percent of the injuries were to the head. Soft tissue injuries were the most common type of head injury, but the annual rate of concussions and internal head injuries rose by more than 200 percent during the study period, from 3,483 in 1990 to 12,333 in 2011. Most of this increase occurred in infants and toddlers.

Voluntary shopping cart safety standards introduced in the United States in 2004 have done little good, the researchers noted.

“The findings from our study show that the current voluntary standards for shopping cart safety are not adequate,” Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said in a hospital news release.

“Not only have the overall number of child injuries associated with shopping carts not decreased since implementation of the safety standards, but the number of concussions and closed head injuries is actually increasing,” Smith said. “It is time we take action to protect our children by strengthening shopping cart safety standards with requirements that will more effectively prevent tip-overs and falls from shopping carts.”

Suggestions include improved restraint systems, placing child seats in shopping carts closer to the floor, teaching parents about shopping cart safety and having stores promote the use of cart safety belts.

Researchers added that there is even more that parents can do to keep their children safe around shopping carts. These include not using carts that lack safety restraints or have broken wheels, staying with the cart and child at all times, and not putting infant seats on top of shopping carts. Parents would be better off putting their infants either in strollers or in carriers that strap to the front or back of the parent’s body.

“It is important for parents to understand that shopping carts can be a source of serious injury for their children,” said Smith, a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine. “However, they can reduce the risk of injury by taking a few simple steps of precaution, such as always using the shopping cart safety belts if their child needs to ride in the cart.”

SOURCE: Nationwide Children’s Hospital, news release, Jan. 21, 2014

The School Nutrition Association (SNA) launched a PR campaign called Tray Talk in 2010. The official website (www.TrayTalk.org), is designed to emphasize the benefits of school meals and showcase success stories from school nutrition programs nationwide. SNA members can help send positive messages about school meals by submitting their own “school nutrition success stories” at the Tray Talk website.

Here is some of the information shared on the site:

School meals are well-balanced, healthy meals that are required to meet science-based, federal nutrition standards.

• • No more than 30% of calories can come from fat, less than 10% from saturated fat
  • Meals must provide 1/3 of Recommended Dietary Allowances of protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium
  • School meals are served in age-appropriate portion sizes
• Every School Lunch Includes five choices that add up to a great value:
  • Milk – Fat free or 1% – flavored or regular
  • Vegetables – From jicama slaw to fresh carrot sticks
  • Fruit – Everything from kiwi to locally grown apples; often fresh
  • Grains – More whole grain items like rolls or sandwich bread
  • Meat or meat alternate –White meat chicken, bean chili, lean beef

•  In January 2011, the US Department of Agriculture released proposed nutrition standards including new calorie and sodium limits, larger fruit and vegetable serving sizes and requirements to expand the variety of vegetables served in schools each week. The standards were finalized in 2012.
  

The School Nutrition Association makes the case for your child eating a school lunch saying, “A school lunch provides students with their choice of milk, fruits and vegetables, grains and proteins. School meals are a great value and a huge convenience for busy parents. School cafeterias offer students a variety of healthy choices and help children learn how to assemble a well-balanced meal. Parents can be assured that there’s no super-sizing in school cafeterias because federal regulations require schools to serve age-appropriate portions.”

For more information on healthy school meals, visit www.schoolnutrition.org.

A new research study demonstrates that there has been a drop in children being admitted to the ER since drug manufacturers voluntarily withdrew cough and cold medications for infants and young children from the market in 2007, and after labeling changes advised that  over-the-counter cough and cold medications were not for use in children under 4.

Manufacturers of over-the-counter oral infant cough and cold medications voluntarily withdrew these products from the market in 2007 amid concerns that the drugs were causing significant numbers of emergency department visits — and in rare cases, infant deaths.

“The change [in ER admissions] was associated with those two events,” said study author Dr. Lee Hamilton, a medical officer in the division of healthcare quality promotion at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We saw that in children under 2 years old, adverse events from cough and cold medications dropped from one in 25 of all emergency department visits for adverse drug events to about one in 40 [such visits],” Hamilton said. “In the 2- to 3-year-olds, adverse events from cough and cold medicines dropped from one in 10 of all emergency department visits for adverse drug events to about one in 15.”

Parents need to be vigilant about where medications are stored. Dr. Bradley Berg, medical director of Round Rock Pediatrics at Scott and White Healthcare, in Texas shared about accidental ingestion of these medications, saying, “ Over-the-counter medications may seem benign to the average person, but they can be dangerous, especially in small children.

The highest number of unsupervised ingestions seen in our study was in 2- to 3-year-olds. These are kids that are beginning to be mobile and may start climbing and getting into more. And, these medications are sweet and good-tasting. This is the age group that parents really need to be monitoring,”

As for the parents who still choose to give their young children cough and cold medications, Dr. Allison Bartlett, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at La Rabida Children’s Hospital in Chicago, said “Many people think these medications are safe because they’re sold over the counter, and many parents may have taken these drugs when they were young, or they may have older children that to whom they gave the medications.

Kids get so many colds; it’s a frustrating problem. The temptation is there to give them over-the-counter medications that promise to make your kid feel better. But, under the age of 4, these medications are no better than giving a placebo and they carry a number of additional risks.

While these medications can ease symptoms in adults and older children, the nasal passages and airways in young children are so small that the slightest bit of inflammation from a cold or respiratory illness makes it harder to breath, and it also makes it harder to make an impact with any treatment.”

Texas pediatrician Berg shared that for children over 1 year of age, a teaspoon of honey several times a day can help quell a cough. “You can put it in tea or in water with lemon juice;” he advised. “The reason that children under 1 year old can’t have honey is a risk of botulism in infants,” he added.

Results of the study were released online Nov. 11 in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: Womenshealth.gov.