This is a recap of health news featuring Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. We hope you enjoy this Monday’s edition of collected news and, please, feel free to offer comments below– we really do listen!
Puberty Hits Girls As Young As 7
Huffington Post
Published today in Pediatrics, the study links the alarming trend to rising levels of obesity and environmental chemicals found in everyday items– like water bottles and makeup– that mimic estrogen.
Dr. Frank Biro, lead author of the study and director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told the New York Times: “It’s certainly throwing up a warning flag… I think we need to think about the stuff we’re exposing our bodies to and the bodies of our kids.”
Obesity is cited as a major factor, because body fat produces estrogen, which in turn triggers breast development and menstruation. But he also suggests the role of endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA), which is used to make the plastics in water bottles and baby bottles. In January 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raised concerns over the widespread use of BPA’s in consumer products, but so far little has been done to regulate its usage.
Cincinnati Children’s Wins $1.1M in HHS Grants
Business Courier of Cincinnati
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center $1.1 million in grants to fund maternal and pediatric mental health research.
The awards, announced by Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Cincinnati, include about $550,000 for a study on improving community-based care for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Another $547,000 will fund research on how visiting health-care workers can treat postpartum depression in mothers.
Jeff Epstein, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s, will conduct the ADHD study, and Robert Ammerman, also a professor of pediatrics, will head the maternal depression study, according to a news release.
ER Leader Continuously Seeks to Improve Care
The Knoxville News Sentinel (Knoxville, Tenn.)
Appointed medical director of the hospital’s emergency department in 1996, Christensen began working to reduce wait times.
Growing up in a family of teachers and professionals who cared for children influenced her decision to specialize in pediatrics. ‘I didn’t know the word pediatrician, but I knew I wanted to take care of kids,’ she says.
She completed medical school in 1985 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and then a pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where she worked as an emergency department physician following her training.
