Worth Noting Recommended 2007 Immunization Schedules for Children and Adolescents The annual recommended immunization schedules for children and adolescents in the United States in 2007 were approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians. The schedules reflect current recommendations for the use of vaccines licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This year, because of the increasing complexity of the immunization schedule, the recommendations are divided into two separate schedules, one for children 0 to 6 years of age and one for children 7 to 18 years of age. Changes this year include:
For the full text of the 2007 recommendations, see http://www.cispimmunize.org. The following information appeared during the month of December 2006 in the News Alerts section of the website of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, at www.healthinschools.org. December 1, 2006 Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) marked the day be noting that in the United States alone, one million people are now believed to have HIV, with many of them diagnosed so late in the illness that they may not fully benefit from available treatments. The CDC also announced that it is launching a new Internet gateway to federal HIV/AIDS information that will guide users to prevention, testing, treatment, and research programs and to federal HIV/AIDS policies and resources. “As we pause today to remember those lost to AIDS, let us also honor them with a renewed commitment to completely stopping the spread of HIV in the United States and around the world,” said CDC Director Julie Gerberding. The new website is at www.AIDS.gov. A yearly assessment of the healthiness of the United States, taking into account personal behaviors, the environments in which people live and work, decisions made by public officials, and the quality of medical care delivered by health professionals, ranks Minnesota as the healthiest state for the fourth year in a row, followed by New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Connecticut. Louisiana is ranked as the least healthy state, with Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas making up the bottom five. The report, which is produced by United Health Foundation in partnership with the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention, notes that the United States continues to trail other countries in important statistics such as healthy life expectancy and infant mortality. The report also notes that since 2000, the rate of improvement in overall health status has stagnated, due largely to the persistence of tobacco use, the relatively high infant mortality rate, and increasing prevalence of obesity. There has been an increase in the percentage of uninsured people, which now stands at 15.9 percent of the U.S. population. The entire report, “America’s Health Rankings,” can be viewed at www.americashealthrankings.org or www.unitedhealthfoundation.org. If every newborn left the hospital with a standard electronic health record, it would be the first step in maintaining a personal health record, and such a record would help in coordinating the child’s medical care, according to a statement of support for electronic medical data issued today by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Electronic records would be valuable for perfectly healthy children but would be especially helpful in the case of children with chronic diseases such as asthma and children in foster care, said Dr. Alan Zuckerman of the AAP’s Council on Clinical Information Technology. Contracts between schools and beverage companies give schools up-front money in return for allowing soft drinks to be sold in vending machines or elsewhere in schools, but the contracts aren’t such a bargain for schools, an analysis of 120 contracts in 16 states has found. The average annual revenue to schools from such deals ranged from 60 cents to $93 per student per year, with some schools obviously getting a better cut than others, sometimes because they signed exclusive contracts permitting just one company to sell and market its beverages in schools. The majority of the soft-drink profits—two-thirds of every dollar-- go to the beverage companies, with schools on average realizing only $18 per year per student, or approximately one-fourth of one percent of the cost of educating that student, which according to the National Center for Education Statistics is about $8,000 per year. The study conducted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Public Health Advocacy Institute was prompted by concern that schools are encouraging consumption of soft drinks, which are known to be the single-largest source of calories in teens’ diets, linked more clearly than any other food to obesity. The study found that most states have very weak policies for addressing soda and junk foods in schools, though many of the largest school districts have taken action on their own to eliminate soda sales, and Congress is expected to consider legislation that would require the United States Department of Agriculture to update its nutrition standards for foods sold out of vending machines and n school stores and other school venues. The report, “Raw Deal: School Beverage Contracts Less Lucrative than They Seem,” is available online, free of charge, at http://www.cspinet.org/beveragecontracts.pdf. December 11, 2006 The 109th United States Congress met for the final time December 8 and adjourned for good, leaving all domestic spending programs, including health, without new appropriations for fiscal year 2007. Instead, the House and Senate agreed to extend through February 17 next year the same levels of funding that domestic programs had in fiscal 2006, thereby leaving it to the new Democratic-controlled Congress that will convene in January to decide how much funding programs will have. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee pointed out that the committee had approved all 2007 spending except for the Department of Health and Human Services before the July 4 congressional recess and had sent the bills on to the Senate, where none had ever been scheduled for floor action. Calling Congress’s failure to pass appropriations “a disgraceful performance,” the incoming new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative David Obey (D-WI) said he and the incoming chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) will announce next week how they plan to deal with “the leftovers from this congressional session.” A report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that 6.5 million children under the age of 18 in the United States currently have asthma. That is nearly 9 percent of all children in that age range, more than double the percentage who were reported to have asthma in 1980. Among racial/ethnic groups, Puerto Rican and non-Hispanic black children have the highest percentages of asthma (19.2 and 12.7 percent respectively). Children with at least one asthma attack (nearly 4 million children) missed a total of 12.8 million school days due to asthma in school year 2002, the most recent year for which school data are available. Asthma-related visits to physician’s offices have increased sharply since the early 1990s, while emergency department visits for children have remained fairly stable at approximately 100 visits per 10,000 children. The CDC reports that asthma death rates for children declined from 3.2 deaths per one million children under age 18 in 1999 to 2.5 deaths per one million in 2004. The report, “The State of Childhood Asthma,” is available online at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs. A computerized information system that stores immunization records provided voluntarily by health care providers is aiding schools to comply with school-entry vaccination requirements, according to a progress report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Grantees in 50 states, five cities, and the District of Columbia currently receive funding under section 317b of the Public Health Service Act to compile data from immunization programs managers, which is then made available to health insurance providers, health department clinics, Medicaid, and schools. The CDC reports that in 2005, approximately 56 percent of children six year of age and older participated in an Immunization Information System (IIS), an increase over the previous year’s level of 48 percent. “Participation” is defined as having two or more vaccinations recorded in an IIS. “IISs are being used increasingly as a decision-making tool for immunization programs and health-care providers to generate patient reminders and recalls, perform vaccine inventory management and distribution tasks, conduct routine public health surveillance, conduct school assessments, and identify clusters of undervaccinated children,” the CDC said. The report, “Immunization Information Systems Progress—United States, 2005” appears in the December 15, 2006, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr. December 19, 2006 If there were a major influenza outbreak in the United States, attention would be focused on community-wide mitigation strategies such as school closures, according to a report on pandemic planning released December 18 by Frances Townsend, President Bush’s Assistant for Homeland Security and Terrorism. Townsend said all federal agencies are making their own pandemic preparedness plans, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has held pandemic planning summits in all the states. Townsend said guidance will be issued in January for ways communities can use interventions such as early school closure, cancellation of public gatherings, and other “social distancing” behaviors in reducing illness during a pandemic. In other actions, the federal government is investing in development of new cell-based technologies to replace current egg-based procedures for producing influenza vaccine, and is looking into “adjuvants”—dose-stretching materials that would reduce the amount of vaccine necessary to immunize a person against a pandemic virus, thereby allowing more people to be vaccinated from existing resources. Townsend also said “all entities,” including schools and families, should develop their own pandemic plans. Guidance for planning is available online at www.pandemicflu.gov. The good news is that use of illicit drugs has declined somewhat among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, but the bad news is that students in those grades are increasingly turning to prescription opioids such as Vicodin and to over-the-counter medications such as cough syrup to get their highs, according to the 2006 Monitoring the Future survey released today. “Of significant concern is the finding that past-year use of Vicodin remained high among all three grades, with nearly one in ten high school seniors using it in the past year,” the survey reported. Use of another opioid—OxyContin—dropped slightly among 12th graders but increased significantly among 8th and 10th grade students. On the other hand, the survey found marijuana use for all three grades “declined significantly” from 2005 to 2006, cigarette smoking is at an all-time low for all three grades, and past-month use of alcohol “continued to trend downward.” Monitoring the Future is a nationwide survey that measures drug, alcohol, and cigarette use and related attitudes among adolescent students; the survey has been conducted since 1975 by investigators at the University of Michigan. The text of this year’s report is available at http://monitoringthefuture.org. |
