News Alerts December 19, 2001 - Survey Finds Youth Smoking Down, Drug Use Stable The annual "Monitoring the Future" survey released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found use of cigarettes by American teenagers decreased from 14.6 percent to 12.2 percent for 8th graders and from 23.9 percent to 21.3 percent for 10th graders between 2000 and 2001. The survey also found that a rise seen over the past three years in use of MDMA (ecstasy) by teenagers slowed from 2000 to 2001 among students in grades 9, 10, and 12; rates of heroin use decreased among 10th and 12th graders; and there was a gradual decline in use of inhalants, with significant decrease in inhalant use by 12th graders. Use of most other illicit drugs remained stable from 2000 to 2001. Illicit drug use rates are below their 1996 peaks for 8th graders but remain largely unchanged from 1997 peak levels for 10th and 12th graders. Marijuana use remained statistically unchanged from 2000 to 2001. Alcohol use indicators remained largely stable. The Monitoring the Future survey is conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. The 2001 survey findings are available at www.drugabuse.gov/DrugPages/MTF.html. The United States Senate voted 87-10 to accept a conference report authorizing a six-year extension of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The House of Representatives had previously approved the conference report, so the Senate's action clears the bill, H.R. 1, for President Bush's signature. The bill in its final form does not contain an amendment that would have required parental consent before any specific health service could be provided to a student in a school. That amendment, offered by Representatives Todd Tiahart (R-KS) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), had been approved without debate when the House passed its version of the el/sec bill earlier this year, but the Senate's bill contained no similar provision. In debate on the House and Senate floors on the conference report, the word "health" was rarely mentioned, but here are some health-related provisions of the final education bill:
The conference report can be reached http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d107query.html. In a detailed examination of the health problems caused by overweight and obesity in the United States, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher today called on schools to take specific actions to reduce overweight in children, including improving school meals; banning foods of minimal nutritional value, including in vending machines; and seeing to it that students have quality physical education in all grades. Saying that health problems resulting from overweight and obesity could reverse many of the health gains achieved in the U.S. in recent decades, the Surgeon General noted that in 1999 an estimated 13 percent of children and adolescents were overweight. The percentage of adolescents who are overweight has tripled since 1980 "Communities can help when it comes to health promotion and disease prevention," Satcher said. "When there are no safe places for children to play, or for adults to walk, jog, or ride a bike, that’s a community responsibility. When school lunchrooms or workplace cafeterias don’t offer healthy and appealing food choices, that’s a community responsibility. And when we don’t require daily physical education in our schools, that is also a community responsibility." The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity is available online at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/obesity/calltoaction/toc.htm. The section of the report addressed directly to schools is at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/obesity/calltoaction/2_2_2.htm.
School Based Health Centers and school health programs looking for an opportunity to build community support for their work should consider partnering with a public broadcaster to do programming on health issues affecting school-age children. Sound Partners for Community Health has announced a third round of grant funding to public broadcasters. The grant creates partnerships between public broadcasters and local organizations around health care issues. The funds will go to the creation of radio and television programming and outreach that encourages citizen action in one of five areas:
Sound Partners is a program of the Benton Foundation and funded by
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. |
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