by Stefanie Zucker
Over the past few years the rate of US infant mortality has been rising. More than 500,000 babies are born premature and around 28,000 children die in the very first year of their birth – sobering statistics for a country with such advanced medical capabilities. Because of this, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) have partnered with several major cellular carriers to create Text4Baby, a new, free mobile information service designed to bring timely health information to expectant and new moms.
According to a recent report...
by Stefanie Zucker
With millions of videos on YouTube, keeping your child safe from inappropriate videos has been a major challenge. There’s a significant amount of sexual content and violence…in fact, typing in the word “cartoon” on YouTube leads to over 300,000 hits and on the first page you find a video entitled “very creepy, disturbing children’s cartoon, banned from TV”. And we all know how enticing something that is banned can seem. Scott Rubin, YouTube’s head of child safety, cites that “YouTube was never intended to be used by children under age 13”. Unfortunately the best...
by Stefanie Zucker
SIDS or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or “the death of an infant before his or her first birthday that cannot be explained after a complete autopsy, an investigation of the scene and circumstances of the death, and a review of the medical history of the infant and of his or her family” is every parent’s worst nightmare. Finally, according to a new study whose findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this week, a new discovery may help identify babies at risk for SIDS, which each year kills more than 2,300 babies before their first birthday.
Taking...
by Stefanie Zucker
In 2008 Congress passed the first major overhaul of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) since its creation. The new compliance laws provided for tough new bans on lead and phthalates, required larger printed warning messages on toy packaging, cracked down on smaller toy pieces that could choke a child and greatly improved CPSC’s ability to monitor and hold wrongdoers accountable. Toy vendors were required to be fully compliant as of this past February.
Toy recalls have dropped dramatically from 2007 when 45 million toys and other children’s products were classified as unsafe. Still...
by Stefanie Zucker
Did you know it would take less than one percent of the U.S. population to provide a forever family for every child in foster care available for adoption? November is National Adoption Month and Pediatric Safety as a member of Global Influence is participating in a coordinated effort between Adopt Us Kids, the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Ad Council, and Child Welfare Information Gateway to make the difference of a lifetime for about 130,000 children who deserve a family of their own.
The mission of Adopt Us Kids is to recruit and connect foster and adoptive families with waiting children throughout...
The world of child health safety issues are changing at an incredible pace. Every day we are faced with new challenges, but we also discover incredible new cures and new technologies as people work to find better ways to make this a safer world for our kids…and for the people taking care of them.
