Informing the Future Critical Issues in Health, Third Edition (2005) / Chapter Skim
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The Nation’s Future: Children and Youth
The Nation’s Future: Children and Youth
Pages 29-40
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From page 29... ...
It encompasses such issues as finding better methods to assess C: and monitor health status; improving the nutrition for all, with special attention to vulnerable populations; developing strategies to reduce underage drinking; UTUREF examining concerns about childhood vaccines; and improving children's access S' to better drugs and safe medical devices. TIONA N Children's health has improved considerably over the past several decades.
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From page 30... ...
Advances are needed, for example, Child Health (2004) offers a new in deciphering the unique susceptibilities of framework for measuring the health children to a variety of toxins and other enviof children from birth through age 18 ronmental health hazards, and in understandand provides a foundation on which ing how health promotion interventions in to build a comprehensive children's early childhood or adolescence can modify health measurement system.
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From page 31... ...
The food packages, which WIC participants typically obtain by redeeming vouchers or checks for specific foods at local grocery outlets, have remained largely unchanged since the program's inception in 1974. In a key revision, the packages are restructured to encourage The first report, Proposed Criteria for participants to consume more fruits Selecting the WIC Food Package (2004)
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From page 32... ...
Given that the proposed changes are likely to entail significant adjustments among WIC participants and could result in some unanticipated effects, the report suggests that the USDA introduce the new food packages in a number of pilot tests before they are implemented nationwide. THE EPIDEMIC OF CHILDHOOD OBESITY A walk down the street of any American town or city, or a visit to any school or sports event, exposes the epidemic of obesity that has overtaken the nation's children and adolescents.
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From page 33... ...
Wide-ranging interventions are needed now, based on the best available evidence, while research continues to refine ongoing efforts. Some of the recommendations challenge entrenched aspects of American life and business -- but the report concludes that if the nation is not willing to make some fundamental shifts in attitudes and actions, obesity's toll on the health and well-being of children and youth will only worsen.
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From page 34... ...
Stakeholders shared their perspectives on the food and beverage marketing practices to children, industry self regulatory efforts, and current or planned initiatives taken by individual companies to respond to childhood obesity through changes in their products, packaging, and market ing guidelines and practices. Several leading food companies have taken construc tive steps to expand healthier options.
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From page 35... ...
offers a comprehensive plan with 10 core components. These components include creating a national partnership dedicated to reducing underage drinking, developing a national adult-oriented media campaign to sustain a broad national commitment and address misperceptions about youth drinking, reducing underage exposure to unsuitable messages in alcohol advertising and marketing, reducing youth exposure to unsuitable messages in the entertainment media, limiting youth access to alcohol, implementing evidence-based youth oriented interventions, mobilizing communities, increasing federal and state excise taxes to both decrease consumption and raise revenue for the plan, improving government coordination and monitoring, and implementing expanded and ongoing research and evaluation.
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From page 36... ...
42. Against Drunk Driving praised the findings as "an important step in finally put ting underage drinking on the nation's policy and public health agenda." The Center for Science in the Public Interest announced that the report "signals a historic first step toward ending decades of complacency about one of the most damaging and widespread public health and safety threats facing society." In later recognition, Students Against Destructive Decisions gave its 2005 Outstanding Contribution Award for Academic Excellence to the study commit tee that produced Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility.
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From page 37... ...
"It is the sense of the Congress," the proposal states, that "a multifaceted effort is needed to more successfully address the problem of underage drinking in the United States." CHILDHOOD IMMUNIZATION Childhood vaccines are the single most important contribution that medicine and public health have made to protect children from disease, lifelong disability, or premature death. Yet in recent years, the very absence of the diseases that population-wide immunization have prevented has caused complacency among many parents about the need to immunize their children.
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From page 38... ...
The FDA is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that medical devices are safe -- for children and adults alike. In 2002, Congress passed the Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act, which, among other actions, called on the IOM to evaluate one particular com ponent of the FDAs regulatory efforts -- the postmarket ' ing surveillance of pediatric medical devices.
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From page 39... ...
, issued jointly by the IOM and the NRC, provides an innovative route for progress. Childhood cancers differ at the molecular level from adult cancers, and these molecular differences represent promising places to start in searching for new drug "targets." However, market forces are not sufficient to drive the search for drugs specifically tailored for children -- the potential market is simply too small for industry to mount major research and development efforts that are unlikely to recoup their costs.
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From page 40... ...
Informing the Future: Critical Issues in Health The report calls for establishing a developer of last resort when an agent shows new public-private partnership that promise only in children but companies decide joins the capabilities of the NIH, not to proceed with full-scale development, and academic laboratories, and the for the government's scientific and regulatory pharmaceutical industry in a virtual bodies to work with industry to reduce the research and development network delays that currently plague pediatric clinical to pursue drugs for childhood testing of new cancer drugs developed for cancers. adults.
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