Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the analysis said the methods and conclusions seem sound.

“The health care system has got to be aware that breast-feeding makes a profound difference,” said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics‘ breast-feeding section.

The findings suggest that there are hundreds of deaths and many more costly illnesses each year from health problems that breast-feeding may help prevent. These include stomach viruses, ear infections, asthma, juvenile diabetes, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and even childhood leukemia.

The magnitude of health benefits linked to breast-feeding is vastly underappreciated, said lead author Dr. Melissa Bartick, an internist and instructor at Harvard Medical School. Breast-feeding is sometimes considered a lifestyle choice, but Bartick calls it a public health issue.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO! NEWS: Study: Breast-feeding would save lives, money – Yahoo! News.

Clotie Robinson has tried for four years to buy health coverage for her 8-year-old daughter who suffers from depression and other mental illnesses, but she’s been consistently rejected by insurance companies.

As a result, Robinson has been unable to pay for some medicines and medical tests her daughter needs.

The DeSoto, Texas, mom had hoped the new health overhaul law that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday would immediately stop insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing medical conditions.  Several speeches by Obama and explanations of the bill issued by congressional Democrats left the impression the law would do just that.

But health advocates and some insurers say the law does not clearly state that such protection starts this year. If it doesn’t, uninsured children with pre-existing conditions might not get help until 2014, when the law requires  insurers to issue policies for all applicants regardless of health condition. There is no doubt that for children who are enrolled in insurance plans, the new law bars insurers from excluding coverage of any pre-existing conditions.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Coverage For Sick Kids Under Question In New Law – Kaiser Health News.

Crude or not, the assessment is crucial: the earlier it is made, the earlier the speech-delayed child can get some help, and the earlier the help, the better the prospects.

“The physician who understands delayed speech understands child development,” said Dr. James Coplan, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician in Rosemont, Pa., who created the Early Language Milestone Scale to measure children’s language from birth to age 3.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE CLICK THIS LINK TO THE NEW YORK TIMES: 18 and Under – Assessing a Child’s Speech Delay Is Difficult, Yet Vital – NYTimes.com.

That’s just one of the findings from new research that suggests that family behaviors can have a significant impact on the weight of preschool children. Other behaviors that may help youngsters stay slim include getting adequate sleep and limiting time in front of the TV.

“Four-year-olds who regularly ate dinner with the family, got enough sleep and watched less than two hours of TV a day were 40 percent less likely to be obese,” said the study’s lead author, Sarah Anderson, an assistant professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health at Ohio State University in Columbus.

“One of the things that’s potentially useful about recommending these routines, if they’re suggested as part of obesity-prevention counseling, is that they may have other benefits, too. And, for pediatricians and other clinicians, we don’t have easy, effective treatments for obesity in children, so it’s very important to try to prevent obesity,” said Anderson.

Results of the study are scheduled to be published in the March issue of Pediatrics.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR BUSINESS WEEK: 3 Home Habits Help Youngsters Stay Slim – BusinessWeek.

The factors involve a child’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

In the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say.

“It really is an under-addressed public health issue,” said lead researcher Clark McKown of the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago.

And the social skills children gain on the playground or elsewhere could show up later in life, according to Richard Lavoie, an expert in child social behavior who was not involved with the study. Unstructured playtime – that is, when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure – is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults, he said.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO!: Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected – Yahoo! News.

The agency, the Eastern Los Angeles County Regional Center, informed more than 100 families late last summer that their children were losing the therapy — known as the DIR model, or “developmental, individual difference, relationship-based” — as a result of state budget cuts.

The therapy is the basis for a popular treatment known as Floortime, in which a therapist follows a child’s lead during play activities to build communication and social interaction skills.

Eliminating it “threatens to condemn our clients and this group of children to a bleak future under institutionalized care,” said Laura Faer, an attorney at the Public Counsel Law Center, which filed the suit Thursday on behalf of the families in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Last July, the state Legislature cut more than $300 million in services for the developmentally disabled, including experimental treatments, recreational activities and nonmedical therapies.

The Eastern Los Angeles Regional Center — which oversees state-funded services for the developmentally disabled from Highland Park to La Mirada — eliminated DIR because it “doesn’t meet the rigors of science,” said Gloria Wong, the executive director, who is named as a defendant in the suit.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: Families sue over discontinued autism therapy – latimes.com.

The program, called the Early Start Denver Model, or E.S.D.M., was part of a two-year study of 48 children as young as 18 months old. Half the children received the intensive therapy, while the rest received a community-based autism intervention, according to a report in the journal Pediatrics.

While children in both groups improved, the gains were greater in the Early Start program. At the conclusion of the study, the I.Q.’s of children who took part in the E.S.D.M. program had improved by about 18 points, compared with a 4 point improvement in the other group. Children in the treatment group also posted bigger gains in listening and comprehension skills. For seven of the children in the treatment group, the improvements were pronounced enough to warrant a change in diagnosis from autism to a milder condition, whereas only one child in the community-based intervention group was given a less severe diagnosis.

The intervention was developed by Sally J. Rogers, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis, MIND Institute in Sacramento, and by Geraldine Dawson, a University of Washington psychology professor who is chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks. On Christmas, the program will become available in a new book, “Early Start Denver Model for Young Children With Autism: Promoting Language, Learning and Engagement” (Guilford Press).

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK TO THE NEW YORK TIMES: Raising I.Q. in Toddlers With Autism – Well Blog – NYTimes.com.

“This is a significant issue that needs immediate attention,” Dr. Ileana Arias, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. “A concerted effort and substantial national response is warranted.”

The study used data from the federal government’s 2007 national survey of children’s health. The survey of parents was conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration, and by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The results are based on a national telephone survey of more than 78,000 parents of children ages 3 to 17.

In the study, parents were asked whether a health care provider had ever told them their child had an autism spectrum disorder. ASD is a group of brain disorders comprising autism and two less severe disorders: Asperger’s disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.

Children with the disorder show impairment in social interaction and in their ability to communicate. They often display repetitive behavior.

The investigators also asked a follow-up question: Were the children considered to have ASD now? Nearly 40 percent of the parents and guardians said no.

That finding led the authors to question whether some of the children originally diagnosed as having ASD may have been improperly diagnosed, since the disorders are not considered curable.

But Kogan said the two surveys cannot be compared because the earlier investigators did not ask the follow-up question about whether the children were still considered to have the disorder.

Still, based on the findings, lead author Dr. Michael D. Kogan of HRSA’s maternal and child health bureau estimated the prevalence of ASD among U.S. children ages 3 to 17 at 110 per 10,000 — slightly more than 1 percent.

Boys were four times as likely as girls to have ASD, and non-Hispanic black and multiracial children were less likely than non-Hispanic white children.

He estimated that 673,000 children have ASD in the United States.

Monday’s findings of nearly 1 in 100 appear to indicate an increase from the average of 1 in 150 that was reported in 2003, the researchers said.

The researchers urged caution in interpreting the change, noting that an increase in diagnoses does not necessarily mean that more children have the disorder. It could simply reflect a heightened awareness of the disorder.

“We don’t know whether the change in the number over time is a result of the change in the actual condition, in the actual number of conditions or in part due to the fact that the condition is being recognized differently,” Arias said.

She said that preliminary results from a separate, CDC-funded study she is working on also indicate that about 1 percent of children in the United States are affected by ASD. That study is to be published later this year, she said.

“This is a behavioral diagnosis, and it’s difficult to make, and it’s difficult to make at young ages,” said Dr. Peter van Dyck, HRSA’s associate administrator for maternal and child health.

Half of the cases were considered mild by their parents, the study reported.

The results underscore the importance of creating policies that will result in early identification and intervention, the officials said.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THE LINK FOR CNN.COM: Study: More cases of autism in U.S. kids than previously realized – CNN.com.

The organization suggested the situation could worsen if the rate of premature births increases.

Each year, 12.9 million infants — or nearly 10 percent of the annual worldwide birth total — are born before 37 weeks of development in the womb, the organization said. More than 85 percent of the premature births occur in developing countries in Africa and Asia.

“Premature births are an enormous global problem that is exacting a huge toll emotionally, physically and financially on families, medical systems and economies,” March of Dimes President Jennifer Howse said in a statement. “In the United States alone, the annual cost of caring for preterm babies and their associated health problems tops $26 billion.”

The March of Dimes report, which used data collected by the World Health Organization, breaks down premature birth rates by continent.

The highest premature birth rate is in Africa, where 11.9 percent of births each year are preterm, with more than 4 million premature deliveries annually. In populous Asia, although the preterm birth rate is lower at 9.1 percent, the number of premature births is higher, at nearly 7 million a year.

While North America — consisting of the United States and Canada in this report — counts fewer than 500,000 premature births a year, its preterm birth rate is close to that of Africa, at 10.6 percent of all births, according to the report. The rate is the world’s second highest.

In the United States, the rate of preterm births has increased 36 percent in the past 25 years, with births between the 34th and 36th week of gestation accounting for the majority of the increase, the organization found. Much of the hike in preterm births is linked to more pregnancies after the age of 35 and the use of fertility treatments that can lead to multiple births.

“Wherever trend data are available, rates of preterm birth are increasing,” the report said.

Infants who survive premature birth face lifelong health risks, including the possible development of cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing loss, learning disabilities and other chronic conditions, according to the March of Dimes.

“Preterm birth is a global problem that needs greater attention by policymakers, researchers, health care providers, the media, donor organizations and other stakeholders,” the report said.

“The marked disparities in preterm birth along racial/ethnic lines in many high-income countries and the concentration of preterm births in Africa and Asia also clearly indicate that addressing preterm birth is essential for reducing the pronounced inequities in neonatal health and for the world to achieve,” it added.

FOR THE CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THIS LINK FOR CNN.COM: Report: More than 1M preemies die in first month annually – CNN.com.