Latest news with #AmericanChildren


Fox News
08-07-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Children's health declines in last 17 years, study finds
The physical and mental health of U.S. children has declined over the past 17 years, according to a new study. The findings, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, charted trends in children's health in the U.S. from 2007 to 2023. "The surprising part of the study wasn't with any single statistic; it was that there's 170 indicators, eight data sources, all showing the same thing: a generalized decline in kids' health," Dr. Christopher Forrest, one of the authors of the study, told the Associated Press. The study found that U.S. children were 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition such as anxiety, depression or sleep apnea than U.S. children in 2011. Childhood obesity rates for U.S. children rose from 17% in 2007-2008 to about 21% from 2021-2023, according to the findings. American kids also experienced an increase in early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms and loneliness during the study period. The paper also compared the mortality rates of U.S. children to kids in other high-income countries, finding that American children were around 1.8 times more likely to die than those in the other countries. Being born premature and sudden unexpected death were much higher among U.S. infants, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes were much more common among 1-19-year-old American youths than among those the same age in other countries examined. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought children's health to the forefront of the national policy conversation with his "Make America Healthy Again" plan. An editorial that accompanied the new study, however, argued that the Trump administration's actions – including cuts to federal health agencies, Medicaid and scientific research – are not likely to reverse the trend. "The health of kids in America is not as good as it should be, not as good as the other countries, and the current policies of this administration are definitely going to make it worse," Dr. Frederick Rivara, a pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children's Hospital and UW Medicine in Seattle, told the AP. Forrest, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said "kids are the canaries in the coal mine," and that the findings reflect bigger problems with America's health at large. "We have to step back and take some lessons from the ecological sustainability community and say: Let's look at the ecosystem that kids are growing up in. And let's start on a kind of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, city-by-city basis, examining it," he said.


CNN
07-07-2025
- Health
- CNN
US children are much more likely to die than kids in similar countries, study finds
Children's health Chronic diseasesFacebookTweetLink Follow American children's health has declined profoundly over the past few decades, a new study shows, and the issues are so serious that children in the US are dying at a much higher rate than those in similar high-income countries. What's particularly frustrating is that the bulk of the health problems are avoidable, said Dr. Chris Forrest, co-author of the study published Monday in the journal JAMA. There isn't a genetic defect unique to American children and it's not about socioeconomics within the United States, he said: The results were applicable to the total pediatric population. 'I think we all should be disturbed by this,' said Forrest, a professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and director of the Applied Clinical Research Center. 'Kids in this country are really suffering.' From 2007 to 2022, children ages 1 to 19 were 1.8 times more likely to die than children in other high-income countries, the study found. The biggest disparities were in deaths from gun violence and traffic accidents; kids in the US were 15 times more likely than their counterparts in other countries to die by firearms and more than twice as likely to die in motor vehicle crashes. But US children are also sicker because of chronic conditions, Forrest said, and that's a newer phenomenon. In the '90s, when he started taking care of children, he said, he hardly ever saw one with a chronic condition. Today, nearly half of children are getting medical care for a chronic health problem, the study says. The researchers, who analyzed hundreds of millions of health records from five nationally representative surveys and electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems, found that a child in 2023 was 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition than a child in 2011. Asthma was the one chronic condition for which rates improved in the studied time period, but it was an outlier. Rates of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and loneliness increased, as did rates of autism, behavioral conduct problems, developmental delays, speech language disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders. Rates of physical issues also increased significantly, including problems with obesity, difficulties with limitations in activity, problems with sleeping and early menstruation. A period before age 12 is associated with immediate health problems including type 2 diabetes, but in the long term, it may also raise the risk of heart and blood pressure problems, studies show. Chronic conditions were the focus of a recent federal government report from the Make America Healthy Again Commission that said chronic disease had made children 'the sickest generation in American history.' That report blamed ultraprocessed food, exposure to chemicals in the environment, pervasive technology use and the overprescription of medicine. The new study doesn't pinpoint what's driving the increase in chronic conditions, but Forrest doesn't believe it's just what's on the MAHA list. Rather, he believes the nation's entire approach toward caring for children needs to change. 'Our kids are being raised in a very toxic environment, and it's not just the chemicals. It's not just the food and the iPhones. It's a much broader. It's much deeper. It's what we call the developmental ecosystem, and it makes it very challenging to change it,' Forrest said. 'That's a hard answer for people who want a pithy message that tells them how to fix the issues. It's about where they're growing up, where they're going to school, they're playing, where their families live, their neighborhoods, and it's not just one population. It's the whole nation that needs help.' In the 1960s, children in the US were dying at about the same rate as in countries with similar incomes, but that started to change in the 1970s. The US now has about 54 excess child deaths per day compared with 18 other wealthy countries. 'This means the same kid born in this country is much more likely to die than if they were born in Germany or Denmark. Why are we allowing this to happen?' Forrest asked. In an editorial that published alongside the study, pediatricians from Virginia and Washington wrote that there's reason to worry the health of US children will continue to fall behind, and political winds are shifting in the wrong direction. 'While the administration's Make America Healthy Again movement is drawing welcome attention to chronic diseases and important root causes such as ultra-processed foods, it is pursuing other policies that will work against the health interests of children,' they wrote, noting massive budget cuts at the US Department of Health and Human Services, including injury prevention, cancelled funding for safe sleep programs, Medicaid reductions, shrinking mental health funding and new initiatives that fuel vaccine hesitancy among parents. The study found that from 2007 to 2022, babies in the US were 1.78 times more likely to die than children in 18 other high-income nations. The biggest disparities in deaths were from prematurity and sudden, unexpected infant death, which is accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed and other deaths from unknown causes. But it's not just children who are at risk, Forrest said. 'Kids are not getting great start in life because women are also suffering in this country.' Maternity deserts, where pregnant people don't have easy access to a doctor, have become a growing problem. According to the March of Dimes, about 35% of counties in the US are maternity deserts, a number likely to grow as states pass stricter abortion laws, driving doctors toward states where it's less complicated to provide care. In 2020-22, there were an excess of over 10,000 preterm births among people living in maternity care deserts or limited-access counties, the group says. Dr. Colleen Kraft, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles who did not work on the research, said the study provides good data on broad problems. 'Nothing here surprises me at all,' said Kraft, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who wasn't involved in the new research. Over 35 years of practice, she has seen the change in her own patients. At the beginning, she treated mostly infectious disease, but vaccines for conditions like meningococcal disease changed that. Now, she fears that anti-vaccine sentiment could erode much of that progress. She also treats a lot more children now for chronic conditions that the community can help prevent, she said. For example, schools could restrict mobile phones so kids interact more, easing problems with loneliness, anxiety and depression. Families can implement a media plan where all devices are plugged into a central location – not a bedroom – so children can get more sleep. Parents can also encourage kids to play outside and engage in more unstructured time to be social and develop their imaginations. 'There are some very common-sense things families can do,' Kraft said. To see major improvement in childhood health in the US, Forrest believes the country will need to undergo a major transformation. In other countries, for example, day care workers are professionals who get paid a living wage, so kids get quality care. Parents also get more time off when they have a child. 'It's time to rethink how we treat kids and how we're supporting families,' Forrest said. 'Children in our nation our like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When their health is deteriorating, that means the foundation of our nation is also deteriorating.'


CNN
07-07-2025
- Health
- CNN
US children are much more likely to die than kids in similar countries, study finds
Children's health Chronic diseasesFacebookTweetLink Follow American children's health has declined profoundly over the past few decades, a new study shows, and the issues are so serious that children in the US are dying at a much higher rate than those in similar high-income countries. What's particularly frustrating is that the bulk of the health problems are avoidable, said Dr. Chris Forrest, co-author of the study published Monday in the journal JAMA. There isn't a genetic defect unique to American children and it's not about socioeconomics within the United States, he said: The results were applicable to the total pediatric population. 'I think we all should be disturbed by this,' said Forrest, a professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and director of the Applied Clinical Research Center. 'Kids in this country are really suffering.' From 2007 to 2022, children ages 1 to 19 were 1.8 times more likely to die than children in other high-income countries, the study found. The biggest disparities were in deaths from gun violence and traffic accidents; kids in the US were 15 times more likely than their counterparts in other countries to die by firearms and more than twice as likely to die in motor vehicle crashes. But US children are also sicker because of chronic conditions, Forrest said, and that's a newer phenomenon. In the '90s, when he started taking care of children, he said, he hardly ever saw one with a chronic condition. Today, nearly half of children are getting medical care for a chronic health problem, the study says. The researchers, who analyzed hundreds of millions of health records from five nationally representative surveys and electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems, found that a child in 2023 was 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition than a child in 2011. Asthma was the one chronic condition for which rates improved in the studied time period, but it was an outlier. Rates of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and loneliness increased, as did rates of autism, behavioral conduct problems, developmental delays, speech language disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders. Rates of physical issues also increased significantly, including problems with obesity, difficulties with limitations in activity, problems with sleeping and early menstruation. A period before age 12 is associated with immediate health problems including type 2 diabetes, but in the long term, it may also raise the risk of heart and blood pressure problems, studies show. Chronic conditions were the focus of a recent federal government report from the Make America Healthy Again Commission that said chronic disease had made children 'the sickest generation in American history.' That report blamed ultraprocessed food, exposure to chemicals in the environment, pervasive technology use and the overprescription of medicine. The new study doesn't pinpoint what's driving the increase in chronic conditions, but Forrest doesn't believe it's just what's on the MAHA list. Rather, he believes the nation's entire approach toward caring for children needs to change. 'Our kids are being raised in a very toxic environment, and it's not just the chemicals. It's not just the food and the iPhones. It's a much broader. It's much deeper. It's what we call the developmental ecosystem, and it makes it very challenging to change it,' Forrest said. 'That's a hard answer for people who want a pithy message that tells them how to fix the issues. It's about where they're growing up, where they're going to school, they're playing, where their families live, their neighborhoods, and it's not just one population. It's the whole nation that needs help.' In the 1960s, children in the US were dying at about the same rate as in countries with similar incomes, but that started to change in the 1970s. The US now has about 54 excess child deaths per day compared with 18 other wealthy countries. 'This means the same kid born in this country is much more likely to die than if they were born in Germany or Denmark. Why are we allowing this to happen?' Forrest asked. In an editorial that published alongside the study, pediatricians from Virginia and Washington wrote that there's reason to worry the health of US children will continue to fall behind, and political winds are shifting in the wrong direction. 'While the administration's Make America Healthy Again movement is drawing welcome attention to chronic diseases and important root causes such as ultra-processed foods, it is pursuing other policies that will work against the health interests of children,' they wrote, noting massive budget cuts at the US Department of Health and Human Services, including injury prevention, cancelled funding for safe sleep programs, Medicaid reductions, shrinking mental health funding and new initiatives that fuel vaccine hesitancy among parents. The study found that from 2007 to 2022, babies in the US were 1.78 times more likely to die than children in 18 other high-income nations. The biggest disparities in deaths were from prematurity and sudden, unexpected infant death, which is accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed and other deaths from unknown causes. But it's not just children who are at risk, Forrest said. 'Kids are not getting great start in life because women are also suffering in this country.' Maternity deserts, where pregnant people don't have easy access to a doctor, have become a growing problem. According to the March of Dimes, about 35% of counties in the US are maternity deserts, a number likely to grow as states pass stricter abortion laws, driving doctors toward states where it's less complicated to provide care. In 2020-22, there were an excess of over 10,000 preterm births among people living in maternity care deserts or limited-access counties, the group says. Dr. Colleen Kraft, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Los Angeles who did not work on the research, said the study provides good data on broad problems. 'Nothing here surprises me at all,' said Kraft, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who wasn't involved in the new research. Over 35 years of practice, she has seen the change in her own patients. At the beginning, she treated mostly infectious disease, but vaccines for conditions like meningococcal disease changed that. Now, she fears that anti-vaccine sentiment could erode much of that progress. She also treats a lot more children now for chronic conditions that the community can help prevent, she said. For example, schools could restrict mobile phones so kids interact more, easing problems with loneliness, anxiety and depression. Families can implement a media plan where all devices are plugged into a central location – not a bedroom – so children can get more sleep. Parents can also encourage kids to play outside and engage in more unstructured time to be social and develop their imaginations. 'There are some very common-sense things families can do,' Kraft said. To see major improvement in childhood health in the US, Forrest believes the country will need to undergo a major transformation. In other countries, for example, day care workers are professionals who get paid a living wage, so kids get quality care. Parents also get more time off when they have a child. 'It's time to rethink how we treat kids and how we're supporting families,' Forrest said. 'Children in our nation our like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When their health is deteriorating, that means the foundation of our nation is also deteriorating.'


New York Times
04-07-2025
- Health
- New York Times
‘I Never Want to See a Case of Polio, but I'm Very Fearful I Will'
Pediatricians like me come to our job with the conviction that children should not die — that whatever might hurt or kill them should be prevented, whether through car seat laws, safety tops on medication bottles, pediatric cancer research or, above all, routine vaccination. Now we're worried that vaccination will become less routine and less available. That the health care structure that keeps children safe may be under threat. That we will watch children suffer and even die, watch families grieve — and that part of the horror will be knowing that these were preventable diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory group met last week — its first meeting since the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dismissed the panel's 17 experts and installed eight handpicked replacements, several with histories of vaccine skepticism. There, the panel, down to seven members after one withdrew, announced a review of the entire childhood vaccine schedule. That's scary. The recommendations of the panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, help determine what vaccines are provided at no cost for about half of American children through the Vaccines for Children Program and influence coverage by private insurers. If the committee turns science-based recommendations into wishy-washy talk-to-your-doctor suggestions or, worse, takes certain vaccines off the schedule, America risks unraveling the infrastructure that keeps children vaccinated and without polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, bacterial meningitis and all the other horrors. 'Every day I have at least one parent ask me, 'Are you still going to be able to give vaccines? Can I do something now in case they're not available later?'' said my colleague Dr. Jane Guttenberg, a pediatrician in New York City. Can we imagine a two-tiered system in which protection is available only to those with the means to pay hundreds of dollars for a vaccination? Can we imagine not giving a vaccine that a child needs? 'I've been thinking about that a lot,' said Dr. Sally Goza, a primary care pediatrician in suburban Georgia. 'Vaccines cost us money. I can't just give vaccines away. I wish I could.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.


Washington Post
31-05-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Why Trump's push for ‘gold-standard science' has researchers alarmed
A new term keeps popping up in messages from Trump administration scientific agencies — a pledge to restore 'gold-standard science.' Many scientists say the opposite is happening. The administration's 'MAHA Report,' intended to diagnose the root cause of poor health in American children, was written by Cabinet officials and political appointees, most of whom lack scientific and medical expertise. It included numerous errors, such as garbled references and invented studies. Thousands of grants that went through expert peer review have been terminated because they conflict with political priorities. The administration is proposing to reclassify government officials involved in grantmaking to 'increase career employee accountability,' which critics see as a way to inject politics into science.