Featured series 
Tag: Pediatrics
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Campus & Community
Ruiz found support at Medical School
The eldest of three children in a Mexican-American family in Texas, Jessica Ruiz, M.D. ’18, was one of only 14 members of the Class of 2018 who received the M.D. degree with Honors in a Special Field (magna cum laude).
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Health
TV a sleep detriment in children, study finds
A study following more than 1,800 children from ages 6 months to nearly 8 years old found a small but consistent association between increased television viewing and shorter sleep duration.
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Health
Targeting childhood obesity early
With childhood obesity now affecting 17 percent of American children, the nation is rallying around the concept that serious action is required. Harvard researchers have identified some key triggers for obesity in early childhood.
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Health
Economic impact of living with a smoker
Children who live in households where they are exposed to tobacco smoke miss more days of school than do children living in smoke-free homes, a new nationwide study confirms.
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Arts & Culture
The 24/7 Baby Doctor: A Harvard Pediatrician Answers All Your Questions from Birth to One Year
This valuable handbook for new parents, written by McEvoy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, offers evidence-based solutions and covers everything from spit-up to vaccinations.
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Health
Weighing the risk factors
Risk factors for childhood obesity may be evident before birth and are more likely to occur in African-American and Hispanic children than in Caucasian children. Researchers studied 1,826 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through the child’s first five years of life.
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Health
Efforts to prevent childhood obesity must begin early
Normal 0 0 1 751 4281 35 8 5257 11.1282 0 0 0 Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should begin far earlier than currently thought — perhaps even before birth — especially for minority children, according to a new study that tracked 1,826 women from pregnancy through their children’s first five years of life. Most…
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Campus & Community
Study says 1 in 5 children lack vitamin D
At least 1 in 5 US children ages 1 to 11 don’t get enough vitamin D and could be at risk for a variety of health problems including weak bones, the most recent national analysis suggests. By a looser measure, almost 90 percent of black children that age and 80 percent of Hispanic children could…
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Campus & Community
Leon Eisenberg, pioneering child psychiatrist, dies at 87
Leon Eisenberg, the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine Emeritus at Harvard Medical School (HMS), died on Sept. 15 at the age of 87.
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Health
Spinal tap unnecessary for most babies with uncomplicated febrile seizures
When babies develop a fever high or abrupt enough to cause a seizure, frightened parents often rush them to the emergency room, where their workup frequently includes a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to rule out bacterial meningitis. Now, in the largest study to date, Harvard researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston find that this uncomfortable procedure…
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Health
Video game technology may help surgeons operate on beating hearts
Surgery has been done inside some adults’ hearts while the heart is still beating, avoiding the need to open the chest, stop the heart and put patients on cardiopulmonary bypass. But to perform intricate beating-heart operations in babies with congenital heart disease or do beating-heart complex repairs in adults, surgeons need fast, highly sophisticated real-time…
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Health
Suboptimal sleep, TV watching correlate with overweight in infants and toddlers
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more…
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Science & Tech
Child enrichment program still pays off after 15 years
Researchers have detected the lasting benefits of early childhood education 15 years after the program ended. What may have seemed like three years of fun and games at the time for the low-birth weight, premature infants translated into higher achievement scores in math and reading for the intervention group at age 18. They also tended…
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Health
Kids too often prescribed antibiotics for sore throat
Each year, millions of children visit their family physician or pediatrician seeking treatment for sore throats. While a sore throat could indicate many common illnesses, physicians are often most concerned about bacterial infections that warrant antibiotic treatments. The most common cause of sore throat for which antibiotics are indicated is group A streptococcal pharyngitis, or…
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Health
Child early intervention programs make for healthier adults
The Brookline Early Education Program (BEEP), a community- based child health and development program, was initiated by the Brookline Public Schools and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and ran from 1972-1979. Enrollment was open to families in Brookline, Mass., and to some urban families in neighboring Boston. The program provided health, educational, and social services…
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Campus & Community
Simple tools can reduce transmission
Viral upper respiratory and gastrointestinal infections are the two most common illnesses that occur in children enrolled in day care, and secondary attack rates within families can be as high as 27 percent for respiratory illnesses and 70 percent for gastroenteritis. New research published in the April issue of Pediatrics shows that in homes with…
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Health
Explosion of child obesity predicted to shorten U.S. life expectancy
A review by obesity researcher David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital Boston, epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues concludes that obesity now reduces average life expectancy by about four to nine months, a conservative estimate. They add that if the current epidemic of child and adolescent obesity continues unabated,…
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Campus & Community
Survey: Down syndrome diagnoses found wanting
A survey of mothers in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that obstetricians and genetic counselors are falling short when it comes to delivering a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome to pregnant women. Mothers who have children with Down syndrome, diagnosed prenatally, reported that doctors did not tell them…
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Health
Hold that penicillin
“The threat of resistance to antibiotics by bacteria increased so dramatically from the 1970s to the mid-1990s that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labeled it a national public health crisis,” said Jonathan Finkelstein of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Boston. The CDC has called on doctors to…
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Health
Bottle-feeding before bed time may increase risk of childhood asthma
Nearly one in 13 children in America has asthma. The National Institutes of Health reports that the prevalence of asthma around the world has doubled in the last 15 years, increasing 160 percent among pre-school age children. Asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under age 15 and accounts for more than…
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Health
Maternal bone lead levels pose toxic prenatal risk
Although much attention has been paid to public health efforts to reduce lead exposure in children between the ages of six months and five years, when environmental lead exposures (such as from leaded paint in old houses) tend to be greatest, less attention has been paid to understanding the transfer of lead from mother to…
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Science & Tech
Depiction of alcohol, tobacco use in G-rated animated films still high
Alcohol and tobacco use is depicted as normal behavior in nearly half of G-rated animated feature films. While researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health say that this is a slight decline, they note that “trends do not provide a strong indication of a commitment from the film industry to eliminate the depiction of…
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Health
Breast-feeding may limit teenage obesity
Infants who were breast-fed more than formula-fed, or who were breast-fed for longer periods, had approximately 20 percent lower risk of being overweight in their preteen and teen years, according to a recent study. In this study, breast-feeding included feeding infants breast milk extracted from breast pumps. The implications are dramatic. “Breast-feeding may prevent obesity…
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Health
Increased consumption of soda promotes childhood obesity
Soft drinks are currently the leading source of added sugars in the daily diet of young Americans. Now, researchers have conducted the first long-term study to examine soda consumption and its precise impact on children’s body weight. Their findings show that for each additional daily serving of a sugar-sweetened soft drink, the incidence of obesity…
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Health
Study quantifies children’s mouthing of objects
A study asked parents to observe and record their children’s mouthing behavior over five non-consecutive days. Approximately 300 children showed a wide range of mouthing behaviors, from essentially none at all to a relatively large amount. “Concerned parents should be reassured by these results, which show that children tend to mouth objects less than previously…