Weekly review: Health care in the school setting and much more
Get caught up with our journal! Review some of the top stories from the Contemporary Pediatrics website over the last week, and catch up on anything you may have missed.
Thank you for visiting the Contemporary Pediatrics® website. Take a look at some of our top stories from last week (Monday, July 15, to Friday, July 19, 2024), and click on each link to read and watch anything you may have missed.
1.) HilleVax’s norovirus phase 2b vaccine trial for infants falls short
Despite extensive efforts, there remains no approved vaccine for norovirus, HilleVax decided to focus on a different development, a Phase 1 ready vaccine candidate for adults.
2.) Maternal BMI, not glucose levels, linked to mid-childhood educational outcomes
To evaluate the independent effects of GDM and maternal BMI during pregnancy on mid-childhood educational attainment, investigators conducted a prospective UK birth cohort study. Participants included nulliparous women with singleton pregnancies from January 2008 to July 2012 at Rosie Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom.1
BMI was measured using maternal height and weight. Additional data collected included antenatal, delivery, and neonatal outcome data. GDM was determined based on random plasma glucose levels between 11- and 14-weeks’ gestation.
A 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was offered to women with random plasma glucose over 7.0 mmol/L. When clinically indicated, additional OGTTs were performed later in pregnancy.
Click here for full study details.
3.) Navigating medicine in the school setting
In this Q+A interview, Mary Beth Miotto, MD, MPH, FAAP, and Donna Hallas, PhD, PPCNP-BC, CPNP, PMHS, FAANP, FAAN, discuss how important communication is between providers, school personnel, families, and the child regarding medication delivery and organization in the school setting.
Contemporary Pediatrics:
What were key policy updates related to school medication in the school setting?
Mary Beth Miotto, MD, MPH:
The first goal of the policy statement was to update what a school health team looks like, and that school health team includes the student and their family as well as the community prescriber. Also, trying to let people know that because of school staffing issues, that you not only have licensed school nurses, but you will often have different members of the school health team who may not be clinically licensed, and because of that, we need as pediatricians and the office prescriber team to think a little bit differently about how to write our orders.
Click here for the full interview.
4.) Communication, planning, and vaccines prevent infections in the school setting
In this interview with Contemporary Pediatrics, Donna Hallas. PhD, PPCNP-BC, CPNP, PMHS, FAANP, FAAN discusses the importance of keeping children home when they are sick, emphasizes the need for proper vaccinations, and offers advice to parents who struggle with logistics or workplace pressures that make it difficult to keep their sick children at home.
Contemporary Pediatrics:
What advice do you have when it is difficult for parents to keep children home logistically, or if the parents feel the child is well enough to go to school, even if they really shouldn’t?
Hallas:
We get a lot of that, where parents have to go to work. Some parents will say, "I'm going to lose my job if I don't show up at work." So they're fearful of that, and they do send their children to school sick. Then within an hour, they might be at work, but they're getting a call from the school because the child's sick.
Click here for the full interview.
5.) cUTI Roundtable: Is Resistance Increasing?
In the second episode of a 3-part series in collaboration with our sister publications Contagion and Contemporary OB/GYN, our clinician panel discussed diagnosing and managing UTIs in patients with dementia and neurogenic bladders, if these infections are becoming more antibiotic resistant, and how resistance affects how they prescribe treatments.
Click here to watch the complete second episode of our cUTI Roundtable.
Articles trending on Contemporary Pediatrics:
A 9-year-old boy presents with neck mass
A 9-year-old boy was seen for follow-up of a neck mass noted several years earlier. He first presented with this finding at 3 years of age, when during an otherwise unremarkable examination, he became upset, and a protuberant swelling was noted in the anterior aspect of the right side of his neck. The mass was soft and presented as a bulge just above his right clavicle, and as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared as the child relaxed. At his initial presentation, the child had no history of head or neck trauma or any recent illnesses. He also had full range of motion of his neck, with no complaints of pain, nor was the area erythematous or tender to palpation. This swelling had not been observed at home before this time.
What's the diagnosis?
Click here for full case details and the diagnosis.
Pediatric nutrition notes: Is deli meat safe?
Deli meat falls under the "processed meats" umbrella, which includes bacon, sausage, spam, and hot dogs. Research consistently suggests a link between processed meats and various cancers. However, studies tend to group all processed meats and they don’t differentiate based on processing methods, like whether nitrates were used. This makes it challenging to pinpoint whether the increased cancer risk is due to the inherent qualities of all processed meats, or specific types within the category.
Click here for the full article from Colleen Sloan, PA-C, RDN.
