Hispanic middle school students may be more likely to smoke, drink or use marijuana than their peers of other races and ethnicities, whereas Asian students seem to have the lowest risk, according to new research in the September issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs...

Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), announced $22 million in new Drug Free Communities Support Program (DFC) grants to 169 communities and 16 new DFC Mentoring grants across the country...

Survival rates overall for childhood cancer are almost 80 percent a marked advance against a disease that was curable in only a small fraction of children 50 years ago. However, despite progress, pediatric cancer remains the leading cause of death due to disease among U.S. children older than 1 year of age. While September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month nationwide, at St...

HIV-infected children receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) may require revaccination to maintain immunity against preventable diseases. There remains no standard or official recommendation on revaccination of children receiving HAART, an effective intervention in reducing morbidity and mortality in HIV-infected children...

Background: Stories may be an effective tool to communicate with and influence patients because of their ability to engage the reader. The objective of this paper is to describe the development of a story-based intervention for delivery of health evidence to parents of children with croup for use in a randomized controlled trial. Methods: A creative writer interviewed parents of children with croup presenting to the pediatric emergency department (ED) and drafted stories. We revised the stories based on written participant feedback and edited the stories to incorporate research evidence and health information. An illustrator and graphic designer developed story booklets which were evaluated through focus groups. Results: Ten participants provided feedback on the five stories drafted by the creative writer. Participants liked the concept but found the writing overly sophisticated and wanted more character development and more medical/health information. Participants highlighted specific story content that they liked and disliked. The revised stories were evaluated through focus groups involving eight individuals. Feedback was generally positive; one participant questioned the associated costs. Participants liked the graphics and layout; felt that they could identify with the stories; and felt that it was easier to get information compared to a standard medical information sheet. Participants provided feedback on the story content, errors and inconsistencies, and preferences of writing style and booklet format. Feedback on how to package the stories was provided by attendees at a national meeting of pediatric emergency researchers. Conclusions: Several challenges arose during the development of the stories including: staying true to the story versus being evidence based; addressing the use of the internet by consumers as a source of health information; balancing the need to be comprehensive and widely applicable while being succinct; considerations such as story length, reading level, narrative mode, representation of different demographics and illness experiences, graphics and layout. The process was greatly informed by feedback from the end-user group. This allowed us to shape our products to ensure accuracy, credibility, and relevance. Our experience is valuable for further work in the area of stories and narratives, as well as more broadly for identifying and developing communication strategies for healthcare consumers.

A randomized trial suggests that the ability of sucrose to reduce clinical observational scores after noxious events in newborns may not reflect pain relief, but editorialists say it may be premature to draw that conclusion.
Medscape Medical News

(MedPage Today) -- Sugar given to blunt pain in newborns undergoing invasive procedures may only mask signs of distress, researchers found.

Medscape Medical News

A recent JAMA news release stated that preterm and low birth weight infants need highly specialized care in Level Three hospitals to minimize neonatal (first four weeks after death) and predischarge deaths...

A new cohort study suggests that teenage smokers who use cigarettes as a form of self-medication may be more susceptible to increased depressive symptoms.
Medscape Medical News

How common is bacterial meningitis as a cause of first complex febrile seizure in otherwise healthy children?
Journal Watch

Can high school teachers be trained to recognize mental health problems in their students, and provide initial assistance and support?
BMC Psychiatry

An examination of data conducted by Dag Moster, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Bergen, Norway found that infants entering the world at term or later are associated with an increased risk of cerebral palsy (CP). This JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) published study first appeared on September 1, 2010. CP is the most common cause of physical disability children...

In a large, multicenter study, lower health-related quality of life was associated with worse disease severity, medical care utilization, and emotional problems in children with heart disease.
Medscape Medical News

An historical account of our attempt to foretell the sex of an unborn child.
Medscape Ob/Gyn & Women's Health

Monkeypox Prevalence Surges In Smallpox 'Vaccine Naive' In Congo The New York Times reports on monkeypox cases, which are "surging in tropical Africa...

The brain's right hemisphere is not involved in the initial processes of reading in Arabic, due to the graphic complexity of Arabic script. Therefore reading acquisition in Arabic is much harder in comparison to English. This has been shown in a series of studies that were carried out at the Department of Psychology and the Edmond J...

In nearly every discussion, debate or lawsuit about gay marriage, the talk at some point turns to family values...

Girls eating a high-fat diet during puberty, even those who do not become overweight or obese, may be at a greater risk of developing breast cancer later in life, according to Michigan State University researchers. The implications - that a high-fat diet may have detrimental effects independent of its effect to cause obesity - could drive new cancer prevention efforts...

Carmen Delgado was driving her asthma-suffering daughter Briana to hospital and crashed her car into another vehicle; police officer Alfonso Mendez told the mother he did not know CPR and could not help - leaving the girl to die. The New York Police Department, whose officers are ALL trained in CPR, has suspended Mendez without pay. The girl's funeral is scheduled for today...