Tag Archives: research

University of California at Berkeley Study: Staying up late hurts teen’s academic achievement

17 Nov

Moi wrote in Teens need sleep: The UK’s Daily Mail reported that not only does lack of sleep result in kids not being ready to learn, but may be an explanation for some mental illnesses. In Online Night Owls ‘Risk Mental Illness’: Sleepless Nights Blamed For Rise in Teen Depression the Daily Mail reports:

Young people who become sleep deprived by using the internet into the small hours are much more likely to become mentally ill in later life, research shows.
Lack of sleep may help explain the puzzling increase in mental illness among young people in recent decades, according to an extensive study.
And regularly staying up late to surf the internet and chat on social networking sites could be one reason young people are sleeping less, according to the research.
The study of about 20,000 young people aged between 17 and 24 found that those who slept fewer than five hours a night were three times more likely than normal sleepers to become psychologically distressed in the next year.
Each hour of sleep lost was linked to a 14 per cent increased risk of distress, according to the results, published in the journal Sleep.
Professor Nicholas Glozier, who led the research, said: ‘Sleep disturbance and in particular insomnia is a predictor of later development of depression and possibly anxiety.’
Less sleep was also associated with longer-term mental health problems – which were the focus of the professor’s study.
A lot of mental ill-health comes and goes, he said. ‘It’s the ones who don’t get better that we are particularly interested in.’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1308182/Online-night-owls-risk-mental-illness-Sleepless-nights-blamed-rise-teen-depression.html

It is important that children get enough sleep.

Vicki Abeles, director of the documentary “Race to Nowhere,”and Abigail A. Baird, associate professor of psychology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Baird’s primary area of research focuses on the neurophysiology of adolescence are reporting in the Washington Post about the effect of sleep deprivation on teens. Abeles and Baird write in the article, Sleep deprivation and teens: ‘Walking zombies’:

Over the past several years we’ve created national guidelines for eating and exercise, shouldn’t we do the same for sleep?
We can also make changes in our schools, like advocating for later high school start times. An adolescent’s brain works on a different circadian rhythm than that of adults — theirs thrives with later wake-up times. After the start time at a high school in Edina, Minnesota, was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of students increased by several hundred points. The increase could not be attributed to any variable other than later start times.
Schools should also adopt block schedules and bring back study halls, both of which reduce the number of classes students must prepare for each day and give them more in-school time to complete academic assignments rather than requiring them to put in a grueling “second shift” after school.
So as Daylight Savings Time kicks in and we lose our annual hour of sleep, let’s make a pledge to help our children get the sleep they need to be happy, healthy, and successful in school and in their lives.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/sleep-deprivation-and-teens-walking-zombies/2012/03/10/gIQAr0QP3R_blog.html

The National Sleep Foundation (Sleep Foundation) has some great information about teens and sleep. http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep

Teens need sleep

Huffington Post reported in the article, Teens Who Stay Up Late Could Face Academic, Emotional Problems Later On:

Teens who stay up late on school nights — whether it be due to homework, chatting online with friends or late sports practices — may experience more academic andemotional problems than their peers who are earlier to bed, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that teens who went to bed later than 11:30 p.m. on school nights and 1:30 a.m. in the summer had lower GPAs than teens who got to bed earlier. They were also more susceptible to emotional problems.
“This very important study adds to the already clear evidence that youth who are night owls are at greater risk for adverse outcomes,” study researcher Allison Harvey, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. “Helping teens go to bed earlier may be an important pathway for reducing risk.”
The Journal of Adolescent Health study included 2,700 teens in grades 7 to 12 who were part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Researchers analyzed their sleep habits and circadian patterns. About 30 percent of the teens said they went to bed later than 11:30 p.m. on school nights and 1:30 a.m. in the summer.
An association was found between going to bed later and getting less sleep (though this association was not found in the summertime, and sleep duration was not associated with changes in educational and emotional outcomes later on). The researchers also found an association between going to bed late during the school year and having worse educational outcomes, as well as higher emotional distress, after six to eight years. Late summertime bedtimes were not linked with academic outcomes, but were linked to higher emotional distress.
“These findings underscore the significance of evaluating and monitoring bedtime in adolescents and the importance of intervention strategies that target bedtimes in an effort to reduce associated functional impairments, and improve academic and emotional outcomes,” the researchers wrote in the study.
The findings add to past research also suggesting an association between late nights and poorer academic performance among teens. One study, presented at the SLEEP meeting in 2007, showed that teens who stay up late during the week and then oversleep on the weekends do worse in school…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/teens-stay-up-late-academic-emotional-problems_n_4256298.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education

Citation:

The Effects of Bedtime and Sleep Duration on Academic and Emotional Outcomes in a Nationally Representative Sample of Adolescents
Lauren D. Asarnow, M.A., Eleanor McGlinchey, Ph.D., Allison G. Harvey, Ph.D.email address
Received 16 April 2013; accepted 9 September 2013. published online 11 November 2013.
Corrected Proof
Abstract Full Text PDF Images References
Abstract
Purpose
The overall aim of this study was to clarify and better characterize the sleep/circadian patterns of adolescents in a nationally representative sample.
Methods
We used three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to assess sleep/circadian patterns of 2,700 adolescents in grades seven through 12.
Results
Late school year bedtime was associated with shorter total sleep time cross-sectionally, whereas late summertime bedtime was not. Moreover, late school year bedtime was not associated with late summertime bedtime cross-sectionally. Late school year bedtime in Wave I (1994–1995) was associated with worse educational outcomes and emotional distress 6–8 years later. In addition, late summertime bedtime in Wave II (1996) was associated with more emotional distress at Wave III (2001–2002). Short total sleep time was not associated longitudinally with changes in emotional and academic functioning. Across Waves I and II, more than three quarters of adolescents who went to sleep at 11:15 a.m. or later during the school year or 1:30 a.m. or later during the summer reported sleeping fewer than the recommended 9 hours.
Conclusions
These findings underscore the significance of evaluating and monitoring bedtime in adolescents and the importance of intervention strategies that target bedtimes in an effort to reduce associated functional impairments, and improve academic and emotional outcomes.
Keywords: Eveningness, Sleep, Adolescents, Academic outcomes, Emotional outcomes
Disclaimer: The opinions presented in this article reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.
Funding Sources: This project was supported by a Lisa M. Capps Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship award to L.D.A., a National Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentRuth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Predoctoral FellowshipF31-HD058411 awarded to E.L.M., and grant 1R01HD071065-01A1 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded to A.G.H. This research used data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. This research used data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, which was funded by Grant R01 HD040428-02 (PI: Chandra Muller) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and Grant REC-0126167 (PI: Chandra Muller and Co-PI: Pedro Reyes) from the National Science Foundation. This research was also supported by Grant 5 R24 HD042849, Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Child Development. No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.
PII: S1054-139X(13)00486-2
doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.09.004
© 2013 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Here is the press release from UC Berkeley:

Teen night owls likely to perform worse academically, emotionally
By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | November 10, 2013
BERKELEY —
Teenagers who go to bed late during the school year are more prone to academic and emotional difficulties in the long run, compared to their earlier-to-bed counterparts, according to a new study from UC Berkeley.
Berkeley researchers analyzed longitudinal data from a nationally representative cohort of 2,700 U.S. adolescents of whom 30 percent reported bedtimes later than 11:30 p.m. on school days and 1:30 a.m. in the summer in their middle and high school years.
By the time they graduated from high school, the school-year night owls had lower GPA scores, and were more vulnerable to emotional problems than teens with earlier bedtimes, according to the study published online Nov.10 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
The results present a compelling argument in favor of later middle and high school start times in the face of intense academic, social and technological pressures, researchers said.
“Academic pressures, busy after-school schedules, and the desire to finally have free time at the end of the day to connect with friends on the phone or online make this problem even more challenging,” said Lauren Asarnow, lead author of the study and a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic.
On a positive note, she said the findings underscore how a healthy sleep cycle promotes the academic and emotional success of adolescents.
“The good news is that sleep behavior is highly modifiable with the right support,” said Asarnow, citing UC Berkeley’s Teen Sleep Study, a treatment program designed to reset the biological clocks of adolescents who have trouble going to sleep and waking up.
This latest UC Berkeley study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has tracked the influences and behaviors of adolescents since 1994. Focusing on three time periods – the onset of puberty, a year later and young adulthood – UC Berkeley researchers compared how the sleep habits of 2,700 teenagers aged 13-18 impacted their academic, social and emotional development. They looked at participants’ school transcripts and other education and health data.
While going to bed late in the summer did not appear to impact their academic achievement, including grades, researchers did find a correlation between later summer bedtimes and emotional problems in young adulthood.
Surveys show that many teenagers do not get the recommended nine hours sleep a night, and report having trouble staying awake at school. The human circadian rhythm, which regulates physiological and metabolic functions, typically shifts to a later sleep cycle at the onset of puberty. UC Berkeley researchers theorize that an “evening circadian preference” in adolescence is a confluence of biological factors, as well as parental monitoring, academic and social pressures and the use of electronic gadgetry.
Late-night texting and the use of other electronic gadgetry can disrupt sleep patterns (iStockphoto)
For example, bright lights associated with laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices have been found to suppress melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate the sleep cycle. UC Berkeley’s Teen Sleep Study uses dim lighting and limits technology before bedtime, among other interventions, to help reverse this night-owl tendency.
‘This very important study adds to the already clear evidence that youth who are night owls are at greater risk for adverse outcomes,” said UC Berkeley psychologist Allison Harvey, senior author of the paper. “Helping teens go to bed earlier may be an important pathway for reducing risk. This will not be an easy process. But here at Berkeley, our sleep coaches draw from the science of motivation, habit formation and sleep to help teens achieve earlier bedtimes.”
Categories: Education, Health & medicine, News, Press Release, Science, Social science
Tags: academic performance, adolescent health, sleep, teen health, teenagers, teens

Education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teachers(s), and school. The students must arrive at school ready to learn and that includes being rested. Parent(s) and guardian(s) must ensure their child is properly nourished and rested as well as providing a home environment which is conducive to learning. Teachers must have strong subject matter knowledge and strong pedagogic skills. Schools must enforce discipline and provide safe places to learn. For more information on preparing your child for high school, see the U.S. Department of Education’s Tools for Success http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/tools-for-success/index.html

Resources
1. National Sleep Foundation’s Teens and Sleep
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep

2. Teen Health’s Common Sleep Problems http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/take_care/sleep.html

3. CBS Morning News’ Sleep Deprived Kids and Their Disturbing Thoughts http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500165_162-6052150.html

4. Psychology Today’s Sleepless in America http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleepless-in-america

5. National Association of State Board’s of Education Fit, Healthy and Ready to Learn
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465734

6. U.S. Department of Education’s Tools for Success http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/tools-for-success/index.html

Related:

Another study: Sleep problems can lead to behavior problems in children

Another study: Sleep problems can lead to behavior problems in children

Stony Brook Medicine study: Teens need sleep to function properly and make healthy food choices https://drwilda.com/2013/06/21/stony-brook-medicine-study-teens-need-sleep-to-function-properly-and-make-healthy-food-choices/

University of Massachusetts Amherst study: Preschoolers need naps
Does school start too early?
https://drwilda.com/tag/too-little-sleep-raises-obesity-risk-in-children/

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Hookah a growing menace for teen health

17 Nov

Peeps, the kids are thinking up new things to get into faster than moi can post. Newest fad hitting many high schools and colleges is hookah. Douglas Quenqua reported in the New York Times article, Putting A Crimp In the Hookah about hookah.

Kevin Shapiro, a 20-year-old math and physics major at the University of Pennsylvania, first tried a hookah at a campus party. He liked the exotic water pipe so much that he chipped in to buy one for his fraternity house, where he says it makes a useful social lubricant at parties.
Like many other students who are embracing hookahs on campuses nationwide, Mr. Shapiro believes that hookah smoke is less dangerous than cigarette smoke because it “is filtered through water, so you get fewer solid particles.”
“Considering I don’t do it that often, once a month if that, I’m not really concerned with the health effects,” he added.
But in fact, hookahs are far from safe. And now, legislators, college administrators and health advocates are taking action against what many of them call the newest front in the ever-shifting war on tobacco. In California, Connecticut and Oregon, state lawmakers have introduced bills that would ban or limit hookah bars, and similar steps have been taken in cities in California and New York. Boston and Maine have already ended exemptions in their indoor-smoking laws that had allowed hookah bars to thrive….
Many young adults are misled by the sweet, aromatic and fruity quality of hookah smoke, which causes them to believe it is less harmful than hot, acrid cigarette smoke. In fact, because a typical hookah session can last up to an hour, with smokers typically taking long, deep breaths, the smoke inhaled can equal 100 cigarettes or more, according to a 2005 study by the World Health Organization.
That study also found that the water in hookahs filters out less than 5 percent of the nicotine. Moreover, hookah smoke contains tar, heavy metals and other cancer-causing chemicals. An additional hazard: the tobacco in hookahs is heated with charcoal, leading to dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide, even for people who spend time in hookah bars without actually smoking, according to a recent University of Florida study. No surprise, then, that several studies have linked hookah use to many of the same diseases associated with cigarette smoking, like lung, oral and bladder cancer, as well as clogged arteries, heart disease and adverse effects during pregnancy. And because hookahs are meant to be smoked communally — hoses attached to the pipe are passed from one smoker to the next — they have been linked with the spread of tuberculosis, herpes and other infections.
“Teens and young adults are initiating tobacco use through these hookahs with the mistaken perception that the products are somehow safer or less harmful than cigarettes,” said Paul G. Billings, a vice president of the American Lung Association. “Clearly that’s not the case.”
Mr. Billings calls the emerging anti-hookah legislation a “top priority” for the lung association. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/health/31hookah.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

Kids mistakenly think hookah is safe.

Richard D. Hurt, M.D. of the Mayo Clinic has posted the article Hookah Smoking: Is it Safer Than Cigarettes? at the Mayo Clinic site:

Specially made tobacco is heated, and the smoke passes through water and is then drawn through a rubber hose to a mouthpiece. The tobacco is no less toxic in a hookah pipe, and the water in the hookah does not filter out the toxic ingredients in the tobacco smoke. Hookah smokers may actually inhale more tobacco smoke than cigarette smokers do because of the large volume of smoke they inhale in one smoking session, which can last as long as 60 minutes.
While research about hookah smoking is still emerging, evidence shows that it poses many dangers:
• Hookah smoke contains high levels of toxic compounds, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens). In fact, hookah smokers are exposed to more carbon monoxide and smoke than are cigarette smokers.
• As with cigarette smoking, hookah smoking is linked to lung and oral cancers, heart disease and other serious illnesses.
• Hookah smoking delivers about the same amount of nicotine as cigarette smoking does, possibly leading to tobacco dependence.
• Hookah smoke poses dangers associated with secondhand smoke.
• Hookah smoking by pregnant women can result in low birth weight babies.
• Hookah pipes used in hookah bars and cafes may not be cleaned properly, risking the spread of infectious diseases. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hookah/AN01265

Karen Kaplan reported in in the L.A. Times about Hookah growing allure among teens

In Cigars, e-cigarettes and hookahs increasingly popular among youth, Kaplan reported:

Electronic cigarettes, hookahs and dissolvable tobacco were all more popular in 2012 than in 2011, according to data CDC researchers published this week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Cigar smoking has also become more prevalent among high school students.
Overall, 6.7% of middle schoolers and 23.3% of high schoolers were using tobacco in 2012. In 2011, the corresponding figures were 7.5% and 24.3%.
Those figures are based on surveys of roughly 25,000 students in grades 6 through 12 who participated in the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Students were considered current tobacco users if they had smoked a cigarette, cigar, pipe, hookah, electronic cigarette, bidis (thin, hand-rolled cigarettes) or kreteks (clove cigarettes) or used smokeless tobacco, dissolvable tobacco, or snus (a powdered tobacco) at least once in the last 30 days.
Here’s what the researchers found:
Cigarettes were the most popular form of tobacco or nicotine among middle school students, with 3.5% of kids in grades 6 through 8 saying they had smoked a cigarette in the previous 30 days. That was followed by cigars (2.8% used them), pipes (1.8%), smokeless tobacco (1.7%), hookahs (1.3%), electronic cigarettes (1.1%), snus (0.8%), bidis (0.6%), kreteks (0.5%) and dissolvable tobacco (0.5%).
Cigarettes were also the most popular item among high schoolers, with 14% of students in grades 9 through 12 reporting they had smoked one within the last 30 days. Cigars came in a close second, with 12.6% of students saying they smoked them recently. In addition, 6.4% of high schoolers used smokeless tobacco, 5.4% used hookahs, 4.5% used pipes, 2.8% used electronic cigarettes, 2.5% used snus, 1% used kreteks, 0.9% used bidis and 0.8% used dissolvable tobacco.
Though overall tobacco use was down, the authors of the report flagged the rising popularity of products other than cigarettes that are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. In the case of cigars, they noted that some of the items in that category were “similar to cigarettes in terms of appearance, but depending on their weight, can be taxed at lower rates and legally sold with certain flavors that are banned from cigarettes.” The lower prices and option of flavors probably make them especially appealing to teens, they wrote….
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-smoking-tobacco-teens-cdc-20131115,0,6663897.story#axzz2ksth5AXn

Here is the press release from the Centers for Disease Control:

Tobacco Product Use Among Middle and High School Students — United States, 2011 and 2012
Weekly
November 15, 2013 / 62(45);893-897
Nearly 90% of adult smokers in the United States began smoking by age 18 years (1). To assess current tobacco product use among youths, CDC analyzed data from the 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). This report describes the results of that analysis, which found that, in 2012, the prevalence of current tobacco product use among middle and high school students was 6.7% and 23.3%, respectively. After cigarettes, cigars were the second most commonly used tobacco product, with prevalence of use at 2.8% and 12.6%, respectively. From 2011 to 2012, electronic cigarette use increased significantly among middle school (0.6% to 1.1%) and high school (1.5% to 2.8%) students, and hookah use increased among high school students (4.1% to 5.4%). During the same period, significant decreases occurred in bidi* and kretek† use among middle and high school students, and in dissolvable tobacco use among high school students. A substantial proportion of youth tobacco use occurs with products other than cigarettes, so monitoring and prevention of youth tobacco use needs to incorporate other products, including new and emerging products. Implementing evidence-based interventions can prevent and reduce tobacco use among youths as part of comprehensive tobacco control programs. In addition, implementation of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which granted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products (1–3), also is critical to addressing this health risk behavior.
NYTS is a school-based, self-administered, pencil-and-paper questionnaire administered to U.S. middle school (grades 6–8) and high school (grades 9–12) students to collect information on key tobacco control outcome indicators used to monitor the impact of comprehensive tobacco control policies and programs (4) and FDA’s newly granted regulatory authority. NYTS was conducted in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, and 2012. The 2012 NYTS used a three-stage cluster sampling procedure to generate a cross-sectional, nationally representative sample of students in grades 6–12. This report includes 2011 and 2012 NYTS data to provide an updated definition of current tobacco use, which now also includes hookahs, snus, dissolvable tobacco, and electronic cigarettes, to take into account nonconventional products that are new to the market or are increasing in popularity; data for these four products were first collected in 2011. The previous definition for current tobacco use did not include all of these products, thus yielding slightly lower estimates of current tobacco use. For example, in 2011, the previous definition for overall current tobacco use resulted in estimates of 7.1% for middle school and 23.2% for high school students (5), whereas the new definition resulted in 2011 estimates of 7.5% for middle school and 24.3% for high school students (Table).
Of the 284 schools selected for the 2012 NYTS, 228 (80.3%) participated, resulting in a sample of 24,658 (91.7%) among 26,873 eligible students; the overall response rate was 73.6%. The 2011 NYTS had a comparable overall response rate of 72.7% (5). Respondents were asked about their current use of cigarettes, cigars§ (defined as cigars, cigarillos, or little cigars), smokeless tobacco, pipes, bidis, kreteks, hookahs, snus, dissolvable tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. For each product, current use was defined as using on ≥1 day of the past 30 days.
Data were adjusted for nonresponse and weighted to provide national prevalence estimates with 95% confidence intervals for current tobacco use overall and by product, school level, sex, and race/ethnicity. Point estimate differences between 2011 and 2012 were assessed using a two-tailed t-test for significance (p<0.05).
In 2012, 6.7% of middle students reported current use of any tobacco product (Table). The most commonly used forms of tobacco were cigarettes (3.5%), cigars (2.8%), pipes (1.8%), smokeless tobacco (1.7%), hookahs (1.3%), electronic cigarettes (1.1%), snus (0.8%), bidis (0.6%), kreteks (0.5%), and dissolvable tobacco (0.5%). Among high school students, 23.3% reported current use of any tobacco product. The most commonly used forms of tobacco were cigarettes (14.0%), cigars (12.6%), smokeless tobacco (6.4%), hookahs (5.4%), pipes (4.5%), electronic cigarettes (2.8%), snus (2.5%), kreteks (1.0%), bidis (0.9%), and dissolvable tobacco (0.8%).
During 2011–2012, among middle school students, for current electronic cigarette use, significant increases were observed overall (0.6% to 1.1%) and among females (0.4% to 0.8%), males (0.7% to 1.5%), and Hispanics (0.6% to 2.0%) (Table). For hookahs, a significant increase was observed among Hispanics (1.7% to 3.0%).
During 2011–2012, among high school students, for electronic cigarette use, significant increases were observed overall (1.5% to 2.8%) and among females (0.7% to 1.9%), males (2.3% to 3.7%), non-Hispanic whites (1.8% to 3.4%), and Hispanics (1.3% to 2.7%). For hookahs, significant increases were observed overall (4.1% to 5.4%) and among non-Hispanic whites (4.3% to 6.1%). For cigars, a significant increase in use was observed among non-Hispanic blacks (11.7% to 16.7%).
Reported by
René A. Arrazola, MPH, Shanta R. Dube, PhD, Brian A. King, PhD, Office on Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC. Corresponding contributor: René A. Arrazola, rarrazola@cdc.gov, 770-488-2414.
Editorial Note
The findings in this report indicate that during 2011–2012 significant increases occurred in current use of nonconventional tobacco products, such as electronic cigarettes and hookahs, among middle and high school students; in addition, an increase in cigar use occurred among non-Hispanic black high school students. During this same period, overall current use of some tobacco products, such as bidis and kreteks, significantly decreased. These findings indicate that more efforts are needed to monitor and prevent the use of both conventional and nonconventional tobacco products among youths.
During 2011–2012, cigar use increased significantly among non-Hispanic black high school students to 16.7%, more than doubling the 2009 estimate (6). Further, cigar use among high school males (16.7%) was approximately double that of high school females (8.4%) and similar to cigarette use among high school males (16.3%). Cigars include traditional premium cigars as well as cigarillos and "little cigars," which are similar to cigarettes in terms of appearance, but depending on their weight, can be taxed at lower rates and legally sold with certain flavors that are banned from cigarettes (7). Youths are known to have higher rates of cigar use than adults, which might be related to the lower price of some cigars (e.g., cigarillos and "little cigars") relative to cigarettes, or the marketing of flavored cigars that might appeal to youths (8). Significant increases also were observed in overall use of current electronic cigarettes (9) and hookahs. Current use of electronic cigarettes doubled among middle and high school females, middle school males, and Hispanic high school students. Among non-Hispanic white high school students, this increase was slightly less than double (1.8% to 3.4%), and among high school males, this increase was slightly more than 60% (2.3 to 3.7). For current hookah use, an increase of more than 75% (1.7% to 3.0%) was observed for Hispanic middle school students; among high school students, an overall increase of more than 30% (4.1% to 5.4%) was observed, but for non-Hispanic whites, this increase was more than 40% (4.3% to 6.1%). The increase in use of electronic cigarettes and hookah tobacco could be attributed to low price, an increase in marketing, availability, and visibility of these products, and the perception that these tobacco products might be "safer" alternatives to cigarettes. Cigars, electronic cigarettes, hookah tobacco, and certain other new types of tobacco products are not currently subject to FDA regulation. FDA has stated it intends to issue a proposed rule that would deem products meeting the statutory definition of a "tobacco product" to be subject to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.¶
The findings in this report are subject to at least six limitations. First, data were only collected from youths who attended either public or private schools and might not be generalizable to all middle and high school-aged youths. Second, data were self-reported; thus, the findings are subject to recall and response bias. Third, current tobacco use was defined by including students who responded to questions about at least one of the 10 tobacco products but might have had missing responses to any of the other tobacco products that were assessed; missing responses were considered as nonuse, which might have resulted in conservative estimates. Fourth, in 2012, the question wording for bidis and kreteks was modified, and cigar brand examples were added to the heading and ever cigar use question of the survey; therefore, any observed changes in prevalence estimates across years might be attributed in part to these wording modifications. Fifth, the NYTS overall response rate of 73.6% in 2012 and 72.7% in 2011 might have resulted in nonresponse bias, even after adjustment for nonresponse. Finally, estimates might differ from those derived from other youth surveillance systems, in part because of differences in survey methodology, survey type and topic, and age and setting of the target population. However, overall relative trends are similar across the various youth surveys (1).
Effective, population-based interventions for preventing tobacco use among youths are outlined in the Surgeon General's report (1) and the World Health Organization's MPOWER package (10). Interventions include increasing the price of all tobacco products, implementing 100% comprehensive smoke-free laws and policies in workplaces and public places, warning about the dangers of all tobacco use with tobacco use prevention media campaigns, increasing access to help quitting, and enforcing restrictions on all tobacco product advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. Interventions are best implemented as part of comprehensive tobacco control programs, which are effective in decreasing tobacco use in the United States (2). Full implementation of comprehensive tobacco control programs at CDC-recommended funding levels, in coordination with FDA regulations of tobacco products, would be expected to result in further reductions in tobacco use and changes in social norms regarding the acceptability of tobacco use among U.S. youths (1,2,10).
References
1. US Department of Health and Human Services. Preventing tobacco use among youth and young adults. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2012. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2012/index.htm.
2. CDC. Best practices for comprehensive tobacco control programs—2007. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2007. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/stateandcommunity/best_practices/index.htm.
3. CDC. CDC Grand Rounds: current opportunities in tobacco control. MMWR 2010;59:487–92.
4. CDC. Key outcome indicators for evaluating comprehensive tobacco control programs. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2005. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/tobacco_control_programs/surveillance_evaluation/key_outcome/pdfs/frontmaterial.pdf .
5. CDC. Current tobacco use among middle and high school students—United States, 2011. MMWR 2012;61:581–5.
6. CDC. Tobacco use among middle and high school students—United States, 2000–2009. MMWR 2010;59:1063–8.
7. United States Government Accountability Office. Tobacco taxes: large disparities in rates for smoking products trigger significant market shifts to avoid higher taxes (GAO-12-475). Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office; 2012. Available athttp://www.gao.gov/products/gao-12-475 .
8. King B, Tynan M, Dube S, Arrazola R. Flavored-little-cigar and flavored-cigarette use among U.S. middle and high school students. J Adolesc Health 2013 [Epub ahead of print].
9. CDC. Notes from the field: electronic cigarette use among middle and high school students—United States, 2011–2012. MMWR 2013;62:729–30.
10. World Health Organization. WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2008—the MPOWER package. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2008. Available at http://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/mpower_report_full_2008.pdf .
* The question to assess past 30 day use of bidis changed between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, the bidis question was "In the past 30 days, on how many days did you smoke bidis?" Students selected among "0 days," "1 or 2 days," "3 to 9 days," "10 to 19 days," "20 to 29 days," or "all 30 days." In 2012, the bidis question was "In the past 30 days, which of the following products have you used on at least one day?" Students could select different products, of which "bidis (small brown cigarettes wrapped in a leaf)" was a possible selection. This change might have affected the results for bidis.
† The question to assess past 30 day use of kreteks changed between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, the kreteks question was "In the past 30 days, on how many days did you smoke kreteks?" Students selected among "0 days," "1 or 2 days," "3 to 9 days," "10 to 19 days," "20 to 29 days," or "all 30 days." In 2012, the bidis question was "In the past 30 days, which of the following products have you used on at least one day?" Students could select different products, of which "clove cigarettes (kreteks)" was a possible selection. This change might have affected the results for kreteks.
§ The heading for the cigar section of the questionnaire changed between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, the heading was "Cigars." In 2012, the heading was "Cigars, cigarillos, or little cigars, such as Black and Milds, Swisher Sweets, Dutch Masters, White Owl, or Phillies Blunts," and the question on ever use of cigars also included brand names. This change might have affected the results for cigars.
¶ FDA has expressed its intent to assert jurisdiction over all tobacco products. Additional information available at http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=201304&RIN=0910-AG38 .
What is already known on this topic?
Nearly 90% of adult smokers began smoking by age 18 years.
What is added by this report?
Although decreases in the use of certain tobacco products (bidis and kreteks) have been observed, current cigar use has increased among non-Hispanic black high school students (11.7% to 16.7%), and the use of nonconventional products, such as electronic cigarettes, have increased among middle school (0.6% to 1.1%) and high school (1.5% to 2.8%) students.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Current use of cigars and nonconventional tobacco products need to be monitored at local, state, and national levels. This is especially true for nonconventional tobacco products and specific population subgroups. To reduce tobacco use among youths, national and state tobacco control programs can continue to implement evidence-based strategies, including those that will work in coordination with the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6245a2.htm?s_cid=mm6245a2_w

How to Prevent Your Teen from Smoking

Science Daily reported about a Swedish Study which showed that parents are influential in their child’s decision whether to smoke.

Teenagers are more positive today towards their parents’ attempts to discourage them from smoking, regardless of whether or not they smoked, than in the past. The most effective actions parents could take include dissuading their children from smoking, not smoking themselves and not allowing their children to smoke at home. Younger children were more positive about these approaches than older children. Levels of smoking amongst participants were stable at 8% in 1987 and 1994, but halved in 2003. The decrease in the proportion of teenagers smoking is thought to result from a number of factors, including changes in legislation and the decreasing social acceptability of smoking.
Use of snus, a type of moist snuff, remained relatively constant. Fewer teenagers thought their parents would be concerned about snus use, probably reflecting a general perception that snus is less of a health hazard than smoking. Unsurprisingly, older children were more likely to smoke or use snus than younger children.
The authors of the study concluded that the prevalence of smoking in adolescents in Sweden has fallen and an increasing number of teenagers have never smoked. “The fact that adolescents respond positively to parental attitudes to smoking is encouraging,” says Nilsson. “Parents should be encouraged to intervene with respect to their children’s tobacco use.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090303193956.htm

Another study reported by Reuters came to a similar conclusion that parents influence the decision whether to smoke

Friends and parents have a strong influence over whether teenagers move from experimenting with cigarettes to becoming full-fledged smokers — but so do parents, a new study finds.
The study, which followed 270 teenagers who had become occasional smokers before high school, found that 58 percent made it a daily habit by 12th grade.
But the likelihood of that happening depended partly on friends and parents, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.
“We found that parents play an important role in preventing teens’ smoking escalation from experimental to daily smoking,” Dr. Min Jung Kim, of the University of Washington in Seattle, said.
When friends or parents smoked, teens were more likely to become daily smokers. On the other hand, they were less likely to become habitual smokers when their parents had a “positive family management” style — monitoring their comings and goings, doling out reasonable punishments for rule-breaking and rewarding good behavior.
Teens whose parents kept tabs on them and were non-smokers themselves had a 31 percent chance of becoming daily smokers. The odds were 71 percent among teenagers with parents who smoked and were more lax in managing their kids’ behavior. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/26/us-smoking-teens-idUSTRE57P43R20090826

The Mayo Clinic has some excellent tips on preventing your teen from smoking These 10 tips can help.

1. Understand the attraction.
Sometimes teen smoking is a form of rebellion or a way to fit in with a particular group of friends. Some teens light up in an attempt to lose weight or to feel better about themselves. Others smoke to feel cool or independent. ..
2. Say no to teen smoking.
You may feel as if your teen doesn’t hear a word you say, but say it anyway. Tell your teen that smoking isn’t allowed. Your disapproval may have more impact than you think. Teens whose parents set the firmest smoking restrictions tend to smoke less than do teens whose parents don’t set smoking limits. The same goes for teens who feel close to their parents.
3. Set a good example.
Teen smoking is more common among teens whose parents smoke. If you don’t smoke, keep it up. If you do smoke, quit — now. ..
4. Appeal to your teen’s vanity.
Smoking isn’t glamorous. Remind your teen that smoking is a dirty, smelly habit. ..
5. Do the math.
Smoking is expensive. Help your teen calculate the weekly, monthly or yearly cost of a pack-a-day smoking habit. You might compare the cost of smoking with that of electronic gadgets, clothes or other teen essentials.
6. Expect peer pressure.
Friends who smoke can be convincing, but you can give your teen the tools he or she needs to refuse cigarettes. Rehearse how to handle tough social situations. It might be as simple as, “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” The more your teen practices this basic refusal, the more likely he or she will say no at the moment of truth.
7. Take addiction seriously.
Most teens believe they can quit smoking anytime they want. But teens become just as addicted to nicotine as do adults, often quickly and at relatively low doses of nicotine. And once you’re hooked, it’s tough to quit.
8. Predict the future.
Teens tend to assume that bad things only happen to other people. But the long-term consequences of smoking — such as cancer, heart attack and stroke — may be all too real when your teen becomes an adult. Use loved ones, friends or neighbors who’ve been ill as real-life examples.
9. Think beyond cigarettes.
Smokeless tobacco, clove cigarettes (kreteks) and candy-flavored cigarettes (bidis) are sometimes mistaken as less harmful or addictive than are traditional cigarettes. Hookah smoking — smoking tobacco through a water pipe — is another alternative sometimes touted as safe. Don’t let your teen be fooled. Like traditional cigarettes, these products are addictive and can cause cancer and other health problems. Many deliver higher concentrations of nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar than do traditional cigarettes.
10. Get involved.
Take an active stance against teen smoking. Participate in local and school-sponsored anti-smoking campaigns. Support bans on smoking in public places.
If your teen has already started smoking, avoid threats and ultimatums. Instead, be supportive. Find out why your teen is smoking — and then discuss ways to help your teen stop smoking, such as hanging out with friends who don’t smoke or getting involved in new activities. Stopping teen smoking in its tracks is the best thing your teen can do for a lifetime of good health. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/teen-smoking/HQ00139

As with a many issues adolescents face, it is important for parents and guardians to know what is going on in their children’s lives. You should know who your children’s friends are and how these friends feel about smoking, drugs, and issues like sex. You should also know how the parents of your children’s friends feel about these issues. Do they smoke, for example, or are they permissive in allowing their children to use alcohol and/or other drugs. Are these values in accord with your values?

Resources

1. A History of Tobacco http://archive.tobacco.org/History/Tobacco_History.html

2. American Lung Association’s Smoking and Teens Fact Sheet Women and Tobacco Use
African Americans and Tobacco Use
American Indians/Alaska Natives and Tobacco Use
Hispanics and Tobacco Use
Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders and Tobacco Use
Military and Tobacco Use
Children/Teens and Tobacco Use

Older Adults and Tobacco Use
http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/facts-figures/specific-populations.html

3. Center for Young Women’s Health A Guide for Teens http://www.youngwomenshealth.org/smokeinfo.html

4. Kroger Resources Teens and Smoking http://kroger.staywellsolutionsonline.com/Wellness/Smoking/Teens/

5. Teens Health’s Smoking http://kidshealth.org/teen/drug_alcohol/tobacco/smoking.html

6. Quit Smoking Support.com
http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/teens.htm

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BBC report: Parents to be paid to attend parenting academy in England

16 Nov

Moi wrote in Parent involvement: Bronx’s Mercy College parent center:
Moi wrote about the importance of parental involvement in Missouri program: Parent home visits:
One of the mantras of this blog is that education is a partnership between the student, parent(s) or guardian(s), teacher(s), and the school. All parts of the partnership must be involved. Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well. A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Class Matters http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/
Teachers and administrators as well as many politicians if they are honest know that children arrive at school at various points on the ready to learn continuum. Teachers have to teach children at whatever point on the continuum the children are. Jay Matthews reports in the Washington Post article, Try parent visits, not parent takeovers of schools. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/try-parent-visits-not-parent-takeovers-of-schools/2012/05/30/gJQAlDDz2U_story.html
The key ingredient is parental involvement. The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (Council) has a great policy brief on parental involvement. http://www.wccf.org/pdf/parentsaspartners_ece-series.pd

Missouri program: Parent home visits

Parent involvement: Bronx’s Mercy College parent center

Educators, parents, and politicians all over the globe are trying to foster parent involvement

Judith Burns of the BBC reported in the BBC article, Cash for parents to learn how to support schoolwork:

Parents in two urban areas in England are to be offered money to attend a parenting academy to learn how to support their children’s schoolwork.
Some parents will be paid around £600 to attend all 18 sessions in the trial.
The scheme, for disadvantaged families, will test whether cash can encourage parents to help their children learn.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the heads’ union ASCL, said parental engagement was a good thing but feared the payments could be seen as a bribe.
“We need to look at different ways of helping parents engage in their children’s learning but I have reservations about simply paying them,” said Mr Lightman.
But he added that the cash could be a genuinely positive thing if it were used, for example, to enable parents to take time off work to attend the courses.
Numeracy, literacy and science
The trial, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), will run in 14 primary schools in Middlesbrough and Camden and will cost a total of almost £1m.
The idea is to equip parents with the skills to support their children’s learning in numeracy, literacy and science….
Some 1,500 parents and carers will be randomly divided into three groups.
One group will get free childcare and meals when they attend. A second group will not only get these benefits but will be paid for every session they attend. A third control group will not attend the sessions.
The attitudes and abilities of all the children with parents in the three groups will be assessed at the beginning and end of the project.
The idea is based on a US project, in which parents of pre-school children in an area of Chicago were paid up to $7,000 a year to attend two sessions a week aimed at boosting their basic maths and literacy as well as their knowledge of how to support teachers and help with homework….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24943762

Here is information about the Chicago Heights Miracle Project:

Chicago Heights Miracle Project
________________________________________
Rewarding Student Performance
Almost half of inner-city Americans fail to graduate from high school and most don’t make it to the 10th grade. In 2008, The Kenneth and Anne Griffin Foundation teamed up with University of Chicago economists John List and Steven Levitt (author of Freakonomics), and the Chicago Heights School District to test a unique incentive program, dubbed the Chicago Heights Miracle Project.
The aim of the project was to use cutting edge methods of investigation in behavioral economics to evaluate the impact of various incentives on student achievement.
Students were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups, or to a control group. Each month in which a student met academic, behavioral, and attendance standards that student became eligible for an incentive.
• Eligible students in the first group earned $50 each month.
• Parents of eligible students in the second group received $50 each month.
• Eligible students in the third group were entered into a lottery for a chance to win $500.
• Eligible students in the fourth group were also entered into a lottery, but their parents received the prize money.
The most significant impact was seen on students who were falling just short of their established goals. For these students, the incentive program had lasting effects: they not only began to meet standards but continued to outperform the control group into 10th grade. The researchers agreed that incentives can play an important role in getting children—especially borderline children—through school. Knowledge gained from the Chicago Heights Miracle Project led to the development of the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center.
Watch the movie trailer of Freakonomics which mentions Chicago Heights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfC-ZHJ4A5U
Read an article about Dr. List’s experiments in the Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago newspaper. http://chicagomaroon.com/2009/5/15/professor-strives-to-test-economic-theories-in-real-life-experiments/
View the researchers’ presentation about the project.
http://www.griffin-foundation.org/areas/chicago-miracle-heights-project.html

It is going to take coordination between not only education institutions, but a strong social support system to get many of children through school. This does not mean a large program directed from Washington. But, more resources at the local school level which allow discretion with accountability. For example, if I child is not coming to school because they have no shoes or winter coat, then the child gets new shoes and/or a coat. School breakfast and lunch programs must be supported and if necessary, expanded. Unfortunately, schools are now the early warning system for many families in crisis.

Related:

Tips for parent and teacher conferences https://drwilda.com/2012/11/07/tips-for-parent-and-teacher-conferences/

Common Sense Media report: Media choices at home affect school performance https://drwilda.com/2012/11/01/common-sense-media-report-media-choices-at-home-affect-school-performance/

Parents can use tax deductions to pay for special education needs https://drwilda.com/2012/10/24/parents-can-use-tax-deductions-to-pay-for-special-education-needs/

Intervening in the lives of truant children by jailing parents https://drwilda.com/2012/10/07/intervening-in-the-lives-of-truant-children-by-jailing-parents/

Making time for family dinner https://drwilda.com/2012/09/10/making-time-for-family-dinner/

Embracing parents as education leaders

Embracing parents as education leaders

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That Facebook post may affect your college acceptance

11 Nov

Moi wrote in More prospective college students getting deferral letters: Many parents and students spend the junior and senior years of the child’s high school education preparing for the child’s entrance into hopefully, the college of their choice. Kristina Dell has a great article at the Daily Beast, 10 College Admission Trends http://www.zencollegelife.com/10-college-admission-trends-you-should-know/ about the difficulties students will encounter when applying to college. So, students and families applying to colleges will have to apply to more schools. College.Com has some great suggestions for a good campus tour http://www.gocollege.com/admissions/college-search/campus-tours/ For many families, the expense of a college tour is very difficult considering they are having a difficult time even affording college. Kiplinger has some good suggestions about how to keep costs in check in the article Make The Most of A Campus Tour http://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/T042-C000-S001-make-the-most-of-a-campus-tour.html Many families cannot afford the costs of going to college out of their area, so they will be considering community colleges and colleges close to their home. See, College Tour Checklist, What to Look For http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/college-tour-checklist/story?id=10119635

The College Board has a checklist for the college bound:

The Application
Narrow the List
• How Many College Applications?
• Tips for Finding Your College Match
• Student Search Service® (SSS®)
• What Selectivity Means for You
• Avoid Sending Too Many Applications
Get Organized
• College Application Calendar
• College Application Checklist
• Create a College List
• Your Counselor and the Application Process
Application Elements
• What to Include in Your College Application
• Is Part of Your College Application Really Missing? New!
• Preparing for Admission Tests
• Letters of Recommendation
• The College Interview
• Interview Checklist
• Practice Interviews
Admission Tips
• Early Decision and Early Action
• College Application FAQs
• Home-Schooled Students and College Admission
• What to Do About Senioritis
• College Application Fee Waivers
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/get-in/applying-101/college-application-checklist

Parents and students can meet all the deadlines, complete all the forms, and provide all the supporting documentation required and still not be admitted to the college of their choice. Increasingly, students are being put on deferral lists. Add another item to the checklist, making sure your online reputation is appropriate.

Natasha Singer wrote in the New York Times article, In College Admissions, Social Media Can Be a Double-Edged Sword:

When I wrote my Technophoria column this weekend about how some college admissions officers have occasionally identified social media posts that negatively affected applicants’ chances of acceptance, I assumed the phenomenon would not come as news to the parents of high school students.
After all, I came up with the idea for the piece after learning from a friend that her child, a high school senior who is applying for early admission to college this week, had recently taken a pseudonym on Facebook — a common phenomenon at certain schools.
In fact, the column pointed out that colleges don’t vet applicants’ personal social networking pages as a routine practice; the admissions officials I interviewed said they typically scrutinized social media only if outside sources alerted them to extreme posts like hate speech.
But, on Facebook and Twitter, scores of principals, guidance counselors, teachers and parents took the piece as an opportunity to caution teenagers who bare and publicly share their heartstrings.
Or as an opportunity to educate their parents:
Certainly, the idea of admissions officers randomly vetting the online remarks of a few high school students raises legitimate concerns: colleges could arbitrarily discover seemingly troubled comments by a handful of applicants and deny them admission — without telling them why.
That notion sparked a conversation about what adults, and teenagers, may take for granted as being private or restricted.
Rather than restrict their online engagement during the admissions process, however, some students are beefing up their social media activities in an effort to distinguish themselves in an ocean of college hopefuls.
Take Bernie Zak, who last spring was placed on a wait list for acceptance by the University of California, Los Angeles, his top choice.
After he learned he was on the waiting list, Mr. Zak promptly overhauled his Twitter account, deleting any “moderately risqué Tweets or curses,” he told me last week. Then he started an online campaign publicly touting his virtues, often self-deprecatory, with the hashtag #AcceptBernieUCLA.
“I wanted to get the university’s attention,” Mr. Zak told me. “I was just another name, just another number. I wanted to be unique.”
Did Mr. Zak’s Twitter campaign succeed?
Last week, I emailed U.C.L.A. asking for general information about whether admissions officers there vetted applicants’ use of social media.
In an email, Gary A. Clark Jr., the school’s director of undergraduate admission, replied: “We neither seek nor utilize information related to an applicant’s social media use (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in the process of evaluating applications for admission to U.C.L.A.”
That said, Mr. Zak is now partway through his first semester at U.C.L.A. He is a majoring in economics and political science.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/in-college-admissions-social-media-can-be-a-double-edged-sword/?ref=education&_r=0

Most people pay little attention to their online reputation.

Moi wrote in Scrubbing your online reputation: Yes, words can hurt: Back in the day, folks had to worry about their reputation in their local community. With the advent of social media, the community is now global and folks have to worry about their global reputation.
Because a person’s reputation is key to future opportunities of all types, a new business of helping people rid themselves of unwanted online information is developing. Lini S. Kadaba of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in the article, Online Reputation Can Make or Break Opportunities http://seattletimes.com/html/living/2013502244_webweb29.html

Scholarships.com offers advice in the article Social Networking Sites and College Admissions: How to Stand Out from the Competition in a Good Way:

Think before you tweet or post. Mark Zuckerberg himself learned that what you post online lives on forever and probably wishes he thought a little more about some of the information he uploaded. The negative can come back to bite you, as can something you thought was funny at the time (if you saw “The Social Network,” you know it’s not advisable to drink and blog); other people are going to see what you publish so if you have even an inkling that what you’re about to post will make you look bad, don’t share it.
Adjust your privacy settings. Tweaking what others can see is easy with customizable privacy settings, which are available on both sites. On Twitter, you can choose to protect your tweets (meaning anyone who wants to access your 140-character musings will need your approval first) while Facebook allows its users to adjust their settings on a friend-by-friend basis. It’s a feature many students overlook in the short run but its long-term value is immeasurable.
Be more than a blip on the radar. Want your intended school to know you’re serious about wanting to attend? Show them not just by “liking” them on Facebook and following their Twitter feeds but by commenting on their posts with insight of your own. Tagging or @replying the school will ensure your response will be seen but if you prefer to just observe, incorporate the topics that appear with the highest frequency or elicit the most feedback into your application essays or interviews. This extra step won’t go unnoticed and could give you an advantage over another applicant.
http://www.scholarships.com/resources/college-prep/applying/social-networking-sites-and-college-admissions-how-to-stand-out-from-the-competition-in-a-good-way/

To quote Clint Eastwood in “Heartbreak Ridge,” “Shut your face, hippy.”

“How would your life be different if…You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day…You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.”
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.”
Anna Godbersen, Splendor

“Rumor travels faster, but it don’t stay put as long as truth. ”
Will Rogers

“Allow enemies their space to hate; they will destroy themselves in the process.”
Lisa Du

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Mathematica study: Moving top teachers to struggling schools produces gains

10 Nov

Anne Lowrey wrote in the 2012 New York Times article, Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain:

WASHINGTON — Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.
A study found profound effects on students whose teachers helped them raise their test scores.
The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, all economists, examines a larger number of students over a longer period of time with more in-depth data than many earlier studies, allowing for a deeper look at how much the quality of individual teachers matters over the long term.
“That test scores help you get more education, and that more education has an earnings effect — that makes sense to a lot of people,” said Robert H. Meyer, director of the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which studies teacher measurement but was not involved in this study. “This study skips the stages, and shows differences in teachers mean differences in earnings.”
The study, which the economics professors have presented to colleagues in more than a dozen seminars over the past year and plan to submit to a journal, is the largest look yet at the controversial “value-added ratings,” which measure the impact individual teachers have on student test scores. It is likely to influence the roiling national debates about the importance of quality teachers and how best to measure that quality
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/education/big-study-links-good-teachers-to-lasting-gain.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

Citation:

Executive Summary of National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 17699, December 2011
THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS: TEACHER VALUE-ADDED AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD
Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER
John N. Friedman, Harvard University and NBER
Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University and NBER
Executive Summary http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/va_exec_summ.pdf
Manuscript (NBER WP17699)
Presentation Slides http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/va_exec_summ.pdf

Stephen Sawchuk reported in the Education Week article, Moving Top Teachers to Struggling Schools Has Benefits:

The transfer of top elementary teachers to low-achieving schools can help boost students’ performance, but there’s a catch: getting them to agree to move.
A new study, seven years in the making, finds that elementary teachers identified as effective who transferred to low-achieving schools under a bonus-pay program helped their new students learn more, on average, than teachers in a control group did with their students. They also stayed in the schools at least as long as other new hires.
But despite a large financial reward, only 5 percent of eligible teachers made the shift, the report concludes.
“It’s a hard sell, even with $20,000 on the table,” said Steven M. Glazerman, a senior fellow at the Princeton, N.J.-based Mathematica Policy Research, the evaluation firm that conducted the study.
Education advocates have long deplored inequitable access by disadvantaged students to high-quality teaching. The federally financed study suggests there is promise in incentive programs, but highlights the logistical complexities in carrying them out, said Sarah Almy, the director of teacher quality for the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that advocates for poor and minority students.
“I think it’s a reminder of how much we still have to understand about this issue, and that it is challenging,” she said….
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/11/07/12transfer_ep.h33.html?tkn=UZXFuaZcxQp8Rqpt6xTNM9vjM4X54hs%2BsBF%2F&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=es

Here is the press release from Mathematica:

New Study: Teachers with High “Value Added” Can Boost Test Scores in Low-Performing Schools
Known to participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative, this $20,000 financial incentive for high-performing teachers to transfer to low-performing schools had positive impacts on math and reading scores.
Contact: Jennifer de Vallance, (202) 484-4692
WASHINGTON, DC—November 6, 2013. A $20,000 incentive for high-performing teachers to move to low-performing schools has helped raise the math and reading test scores of elementary students by 4 to 10 percentile points, according to a new studyconducted by Mathematica Policy Research and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Although there was no evidence of impacts in middle schools, the combined impact on elementary and middle school grade teams was positive and significant for reading by the second year after the transfer. The average cost of producing these gains in elementary and middle schools is estimated to be $7,000 cheaper than reducing class size to produce a similar effect. In elementary schools, the intervention was $13,000 cheaper per grade than the class-size reduction benchmark.
Many education policy experts have raised concerns that disadvantaged students do not have the same access to highly effective teachers as other students. To address this issue, IES sponsored an evaluation of an intervention known to study participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI). TTI offered a financial incentive to the teachers with the highest scores year after year on value-added measures (estimates of their ability to raise test scores, after accounting for differences between students) if they would transfer to a low-achieving school in the same district and remain there for at least two years.
About 22 percent of the selected teachers applied for the transfer, and 5 percent (81 teachers) ultimately transferred. These teachers filled 88 percent of the targeted teaching vacancies in low-performing schools. The results of the study include the following:
• TTI increased test scores in elementary schools, but not in middle schools. In classrooms targeted by TTI, impacts on elementary math and reading scores ranged from 10 to 25 percent of a standard deviation, depending on the subject and year. This is equivalent to increases of 4 to 10 percentile points. Impacts on elementary grade teams as a whole were positive in the second year, equal to 8 and 7 percent of a standard deviation in math and reading, respectively—or about 3 percentile points. Although there was no evidence of impacts in middle schools, the combined impact on elementary and middle school grade teams was positive and significant for reading by the second year after the transfer. Different outcomes in elementary versus middle schools could in part reflect differences between districts, which varied considerably in terms of impacts and where they offered TTI (elementary or middle schools).
• Most TTI teachers stayed on the job even after payments ended. TTI had a positive impact on teacher-retention rates during the first two years, while transfer teachers were receiving bonus payments. Ninety-three percent of TTI teachers remained in their positions during that period, versus 70 percent of traditionally hired teachers. Moreover, most (60 percent) of the teachers in the TTI group also continued to teach in the low-performing schools in their third year, after the payments ended.
• Compared with similar interventions, TTI was more cost-effective. The largest impacts were in elementary schools, where the cost savings could be as large as $13,000 per grade at a given school, compared with other interventions that can be equally effective in raising test scores, such as reducing class size. Including middle schools, where achievement impacts were not significant, and assuming that the total impacts persist into a third year, the estimated cost savings exceeded $40,000 per grade.
Steven Glazerman, study director and senior fellow at Mathematica, said, “For TTI to show positive effects, two things had to be true: first, the value-added measure had to contain some meaningful signal about future performance, and second, the teachers’ skills had to transfer to the teachers’ new settings. The fact that some teachers had positive impacts and then stayed beyond their two-year commitment suggests that selective transfer incentives may have lasting effects.”
About the Study: Sponsored by IES, this multisite randomized experiment was used to study the TTI intervention in 10 large, economically diverse school districts across seven states. The districts identified schools with the lowest test scores and singled out grade-subject teams with teaching vacancies. The researchers randomly assigned each team to either a treatment group, where the principals could interview and hire a TTI-transfer candidate eligible for $20,000, or to a control group, where the school principals filled the vacancies however they normally would. Researchers then followed the students and teachers in both the treatment and control groups for two years and compared their outcomes.
View the video, fact sheet, or full report on this study.
About Mathematica: Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm, provides a full range of research and data collection services, including program evaluation and policy research, survey design and data collection, research assessment and interpretation, and program performance/data management, to improve public well-being. Its clients include federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector and international organizations. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Cambridge, Mass.; Chicago, Ill.; Oakland, Calif.; and Washington, D.C., has conducted some of the most important studies of education, disability, health care, family support, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs.
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/education/tti_high_perform_teachers.pdf

Every child has a right to a good basic education. In order to ensure that every child has a good basic education, there must be a quality teacher in every classroom.

Related:

Studies: For struggling math students, teacher quality matters https://drwilda.com/2013/04/14/studies-for-struggling-math-students-teacher-quality-matters/

The attempt to evaluate teacher colleges is getting nasty https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/523/

Could newest teaching strategy be made in Japan? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/could-newest-teaching-strategy-be-made-in-japan/

New Harvard study about impact of teachers https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/new-harvard-study-about-impact-of-teachers/

Is it true that the dumbest become teachers? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/is-it-true-that-the-dumbest-become-teachers/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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New federal guidelines for schools regarding student allergies

4 Nov

Moi wrote about allergies in Food allergies can be deadly for some children:
If one is not allergic to substances, then you probably don’t pay much attention to food allergies. The parents and children in one Florida classroom are paying a lot of attention to the subject of food allergies because of the severe allergic reaction one child has to peanuts. In the article, Peanut Allergy Stirs Controversy At Florida Schools Reuters reports:

Some public school parents in Edgewater, Florida, want a first-grade girl with life-threatening peanut allergies removed from the classroom and home-schooled, rather than deal with special rules to protect her health, a school official said.
“That was one of the suggestions that kept coming forward from parents, to have her home-schooled. But we’re required by federal law to provide accommodations. That’s just not even an option for us,” said Nancy Wait, spokeswoman for the Volusia County School District.
Wait said the 6-year-old’s peanut allergy is so severe it is considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
To protect the girl, students in her class at Edgewater Elementary School are required to wash their hands before entering the classroom in the morning and after lunch, and rinse out their mouths, Wait said, and a peanut-sniffing dog checked out the school during last week’s spring break….
Chris Burr, a father of two older students at the school whose wife has protested at the campus, said a lot of small accommodations have added up to frustration for many parents.
“If I had a daughter who had a problem, I would not ask everyone else to change…. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/22/us-peanut-allergy-idUSTRE72L7AQ20110322

More children seem to have peanut allergies.
See, More school battles about peanut allergies https://drwilda.com/tag/allergy/

Mike Stobbe of AP reported in the article, Feds post food allergy guidelines for schools:

ATLANTA (AP) — The federal government is issuing its first guidelines to schools on how to protect children with food allergies.
The voluntary guidelines call on schools to take such steps as restricting nuts, shellfish or other foods that can cause allergic reactions, and make sure emergency allergy medicine — like EpiPens — are available.
About 15 states — and numerous individual schools or school districts — already have policies of their own. “The need is here” for a more comprehensive, standardized way for schools to deal with this issue, said Dr. Wayne Giles, who oversaw development of the advice for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Food allergies are a growing concern. A recent CDC survey estimated that about 1 in 20 U.S. children have food allergies — a 50 percent increase from the late 1990s. Experts aren’t sure why cases are rising.
Many food allergies are mild and something children grow out of. But severe cases may cause anaphylactic shock or even death from eating, say, a peanut.
The guidelines released Wednesday were required by a 2011 federal law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/school-allergy-guidelines_n_4177867.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

Here is information from the Centers for Disease Control about the guidelines:

Food Allergies in Schools
Food allergies are a growing food safety and public health concern that affect an estimated 4%–6% of children in the United States.1, 2 Allergic reactions can be life threatening and have far-reaching effects on children and their families, as well as on the schools or early care and education (ECE) programs they attend. Staff who work in schools and ECE programs should develop plans for preventing an allergic reaction and responding to a food allergy emergency.
Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies In Schools and Early Care and Education Programs [PDF – 10MB]
Food Allergy Guidelines FAQs [PDF – 163KB]
What is a Food Allergy?
A food allergy occurs when the body has a specific and reproducible immune response to certain foods.3 The body’s immune response can be severe and life threatening, such as anaphylaxis. Although the immune system normally protects people from germs, in people with food allergies, the immune system mistakenly responds to food as if it were harmful.
Eight foods or food groups account for 90% of serious allergic reactions in the United States: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, wheat, soy, peanuts, and tree nuts.3
Symptoms of Food Allergy in Children
Symptoms Communicated by Children with Food Allergies4
• It feels like something is poking my tongue.
• My tongue (or mouth) is tingling (or burning).
• My tongue (or mouth) itches.
• My tongue feels like there is hair on it.
• My mouth feels funny.
• There’s a frog in my throat; there’s something stuck in my throat.
• My tongue feels full (or heavy).
• My lips feel tight.
• It feels like there are bugs in there (to describe itchy ears).
• It (my throat) feels thick.
• It feels like a bump is on the back of my tongue (throat).
The symptoms and severity of allergic reactions to food can be different between individuals, and can also be different for one person over time. Anaphylaxis is a sudden and severe allergic reaction that may cause death.5 Not all allergic reactions will develop into anaphylaxis.
Food Allergies in Schools
• Children with food allergies are two to four times more likely to have asthma or other allergic conditions than those without food allergies.1
• The prevalence of food allergies among children increased 18% during 1997–2007, and allergic reactions to foods have become the most common cause of anaphylaxis in community health settings.1,6
• In 2006, about 88% of schools had one or more students with a food allergy.7

Treatment and Prevention of Food Allergies in Children
There is no cure for food allergies. Strict avoidance of the food allergen is the only way to prevent a reaction. However, since it is not always easy or possible to avoid certain foods, staff in schools and ECE programs should develop plans to deal with allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Early and quick recognition and treatment of allergic reactions that may lead to anaphylaxis can prevent serious health problems or death.
Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies In Schools and Early Care and Education Programs
In consultation with the U.S. Department of Education and a number of other federal agencies, CDC developed the Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies in Schools and Early Care and Education Centers [PDF – 10MB] in fulfillment of the 2011 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act to improve food safety in the United States. Download Food Allergy Guidelines FAQs [PDF – 163KB].
The Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies provide practical information and planning steps for parents, district administrators, school administrators and staff, and ECE program administrators and staff to develop or strengthen plans for food allergy management and prevention. The Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies include recommendations for each of the five priority areas that should be addressed in each school’s or ECE program’s Food Allergy Management Prevention Plan:
1. Ensure the daily management of food allergies in individual children.
2. Prepare for food allergy emergencies.
3. Provide professional development on food allergies for staff members.
4. Educate children and family members about food allergies.
5. Create and maintain a healthy and safe educational environment.
References
1. Branum AM, Lukacs SL. Food allergy among U.S. children: trends in prevalence and hospitalizations. NCHS Data Brief. 2008;10:1-8.
2. Liu AH, Jaramillo R, Sicherer SH, et al. National prevalence and risk factors for food allergy and relationship to asthma: results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2006. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2010;126(4):798-806.e13.
3. Boyce JA, Assa’ad A, Burks AW, et al; NIAID-Sponsored Expert Panel. Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of food allergy in the United States: report of the NIAID-sponsored expert panel. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2010;126(suppl 6):S1-S58.
4. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. Food Allergy News. 2003;13(2).
5. Sampson HA, Munoz-Furlong A, Campbell RL, et al. Second symposium on the definition and management of anaphylaxis: summary report—Second National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease/Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network Symposium. Ann Emerg Med. 2006;47(4):373-380.
6. Decker WW, Campbell RL, Manivannan V, et al. The etiology and incidence of anaphylaxis in Rochester, Minnesota: a report from the Rochester Epidemiology Project. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2008;122(6):1161-1165.
7. O’Toole TP, Anderson S, Miller C, Guthrie J. Nutrition services and foods and beverages available at school: results from the School Health Policies and Programs Study 2006. J Sch Health. 2007;77:500-521.
Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies In Schools and Early Care and Education Programs [PDF – 10MB]
Food Allergy Guidelines FAQs [PDF – 163KB]
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/foodallergies/

It requires a great deal of tact and give and take on the part of parents and the school to produce a workable situation for students, the child with the allergy, and parents.
A physical examination is important for children to make sure that there are no health problems. The University of Arizona Department of Pediatrics has an excellent article which describes Pediatric History and Physical Examination http://www.peds.arizona.edu/medstudents/Physicalexamination.asp The article goes on to describe how the physical examination is conducted and what observations and tests are part of the examination. The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital describes the Process of the Physical Examination http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/health/p/exam/
If children have allergies, parents must work with their schools to prepare a allergy health plan.

Resources:

Micheal Borella’s Chicago-Kent Law Review article, Food Allergies In Public Schools: Toward A Model Code http://www.cklawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/vol85no2/Borella.pdf

USDA’s Accommodating Children With Special Dietary Needs http://www.k12.wa.us/ChildNutrition/pubdocs/SpecialDietaryNeeds.PDF

Child and Teen Checkup Fact Sheet http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/fh/mch/ctc/factsheets.html

Video: What to Expect From A Child’s Physical Exam http://on.aol.com/video/what-to-expect-from-a-childs-physical-exam-325661948

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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Yale University study: Left-handed people more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia

3 Nov

Science Daily reported in the article, Lefties More Likely to Have Psychotic Disorders Such as Schizophrenia:

Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome. 1 The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open. About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, “a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed….” Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders. The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. “Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained,” said Webb. What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked “What hand do you write with?” “This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way,” said Webb. “Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people — those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131031125319.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

Citation:

Journal Reference:
1. J. R. Webb, M. I. Schroeder, C. Chee, D. Dial, R. Hana, H. Jefee, J. Mays, P. Molitor. Left-Handedness Among a Community Sample of Psychiatric Outpatients Suffering From Mood and Psychotic Disorders. SAGE Open, 2013; 3 (4) DOI: 10.1177/2158244013503166

Here is the Yale University press release:

By Karen N. Peart
October 31, 2013
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open. About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, “a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed.”
“In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed,” said Webb. “Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways.” Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. “Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained,” said Webb. What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked “What hand do you write with?” “This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way,” said Webb. “Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%.
Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people — those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support.”
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor. Citation: Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)

For interesting facts about left-handed people http://facts.randomhistory.com/facts-about-left-handedness.html

A 2011 Wall Street Journal article, The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed, highlighted some of the potential challenges faced by lefties:

On average there is no significant difference in IQ between righties and lefties, studies show, belying popular perceptions. There is some evidence that lefties are better at divergent thinking, or starting from existing knowledge to develop new concepts, which is considered an element of creativity. And left-handed people have salaries that on average are about 10% lower than righties, according to recent research performed at Harvard University that analyzed large income data bases, although findings of some earlier studies were mixed.
Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies. The reasons for this aren’t clear. Scientists speculate it could be related to a concept known as brain lateralization.
The brain has two halves. Each performs primarily separate, specialized functions, such as language processing, which mainly takes place in the left hemisphere. There is lots of communication between the hemispheres. Typically in right-handers, the brain’s left side is dominant. But this tendency doesn’t hold up with lefties, as scientists previously believed. Some 70% of lefties rely on the left hemisphere for their language centers, a key brain function, says Metten Somers, a psychiatrist and researcher who studies brain lateralization at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. This doesn’t appear to present problems, scientists say. The other 30% of lefties appear to exhibit either a right-dominant or distributed pattern, Dr. Somers says. They may be more prone to impaired learning or functioning, and at greater risk for brain disorders, he says. Hemisphere dominance is typical and more efficient. Symmetry, in which neither side is dominant, is believed linked to disorders, researchers say. People with schizophrenia, for instance, exhibit more symmetrical activation of their brain hemispheres than those without the disorder, studies show.
In a 2008 study, Alina Rodriguez, a psychology professor at Mid Sweden University in Östersund who studies handedness, brain development and ADHD, found that left- or mixed-handedness in children was linked to a greater risk of difficulty with language as well as ADHD symptoms. In another study published last year in Pediatrics, involving nearly 8,000 Finnish children, Dr. Rodriguez found that mixed-handedness rather than left-handedness was linked to ADHD symptoms. And knowing that a child was mixed-handed and had ADHD symptoms at age 8 helped predict much more accurately than just knowing they had symptoms at that age whether the child would continue to have symptoms at age 16. (What happens when people are forced to switch from writing with their dominant hand to the other isn’t well known, experts say.) Research that suggests that there is a link between favoring the left hand and an increased risk of bipolar disorder and ADHD, among other conditions. Emily Nelson has details on Lunch Break.
One reason that not more is known about lefties is that many studies of how the brain works prohibit left-handers from participating because their brain wiring is known to be different, says Robin Nusslock, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who uses neuroimaging to study mood disorders.
Lefties have an advantage in sports such as tennis, fencing and baseball, when up against a righthanded competitor, but not in noninteractive sports such as gymnastics. A potential pathway between prenatal stress and brain wiring could be cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, which can interfere with brain development, says Carsten Obel, a professor at the public-health department at Aarhus University in Denmark who has conducted research on the prenatal environment and risk of disease. Cortisol is able to pass over the placenta barrier to influence the baby.
Several studies show that stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or job loss, during pregnancy increase the risk of having non-right-handed children. In one study of 834 Danish mothers and their 3-year-old children, Dr. Obel and his colleagues found that mothers who reported multiple stressful events during their third trimester of pregnancy and experienced distress were more than three times as likely to have a mixed-handed child, 17% compared with 5%, according to the 2003 paper published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. Another large study followed 1,700 Swedish mothers and children until the kids were 5 years old. It found that mothers with depressive symptoms or who underwent stressful life events while pregnant were more likely to have left- or mixed-handed children. The work was published by Dr. Rodriguez and her colleagues in 2008 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Experts suggest that left- and mixed-handedness could be used as a risk factor for possible psychiatric or developmental conditions, along with behavioral difficulties, such as having a hard time in school. The presence of such risk factors could prompt early evaluation for those conditions, they say. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204083204577080562692452538

The best defense for parents is a good awareness of what is going on with their child. As a parent you need to know what is going on in your child’s world

Related:

GAO report: Children’s mental health services are lacking https://drwilda.com/2013/01/12/gao-report-childrens-mental-health-services-are-lacking/

Schools have to deal with depressed and troubled children: https://drwilda.com/2011/11/15/schools-have-to-deal-with-depressed-and-troubled-children/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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University of Oregon study: Abusive parenting may have biological link

16 Oct

Moi wrote in University of Pittsburgh study: Harsh verbal discipline is not effective;
The question is how to find a balance between “Tiger Mom” and phony self-esteem.
In No one is perfect: People sometimes fail, moi said:
The Child Development Institute has a good article about how to help your child develop healthy self esteem. A discussion of values is often difficult, but the question the stage parent, over the top little league father, or out of control soccer mom should ask of themselves is what do you really and truly value? What is more important, your child’s happiness and self esteem or your fulfilling an unfinished part of your life through your child? Joe Jackson, the winner of the most heinous stage parent award saw his dreams fulfilled with the price of the destruction of his children’s lives. Most people with a healthy dose of self esteem and sanity would say this is too high a price.
Letting Go
Sarah Mahoney wrote a good article at Parents.Com http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/self_esteem/ about four ways to let go of your kids and she describes her four steps, which she calls Independence Day. Newsweek also has an article on the fine art of letting gohttp://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/05/21/the-fine-art-of-letting-go.html
Remember it is your child’s life and they should be allowed to realize their dreams, not yours.
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/no-one-is-perfect-people-sometimes-fail/ https://drwilda.com/tag/is-tough-parenting-really-the-answer/

Science Daily reported in the article, Abusive Parenting May Have a Biological Basis:

Parents who physically abuse their children appear to have a physiological response that subsequently triggers more harsh parenting when they attempt parenting in warm, positive ways, according to new research….
Studies of child maltreatment have consistently found that parents who physically abuse their children tend to parent in more hostile, critical and controlling ways. Skowron’s team appears to have found evidence of a physiological basis for patterns of aversive parenting — the use of hostile actions such as grabbing an arm or hand or using negative verbal cues in guiding a child’s behavior — in a sample of families involved with Child Protective Services.
For the experiment, mothers and children were monitored to record changes in heart rate while playing together in the lab. Parenting behavior was scored to capture positive parenting and strict, hostile control using a standard coding system.
What emerged, Skowron said, were clear distinctions between abusive, neglectful and non-maltreating mothers in their physiological responses during parenting. When abusive mothers were more warm and nurturing, they began to experience more difficulty regulating their heart rate and staying calm. This physiological-based stress response then led the abusive mothers to become more hostile and controlling toward their child a short time later in the interaction.
The same was not the case for mothers who had been previously identified as being physically neglectful or for mothers with no history of neglectful or abusive parenting.
Participants in the National Institutes of Health-funded study were 141 mothers — 94 percent Caucasian with a high school degree or less and incomes at or below $30,000 — and their children, ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old. The research focuses on tracking the effects of physiology on parenting in real time.
“Abusive mothers who try to warmly support their child when the child faced a moderate challenge displayed a physiological response that suggested they’re stressed, on alert and preparing to defend against a threat of some kind,” said Skowron, a researcher at the Child and Family Center/Prevention Science Institute at the UO. “This kind of physiological response then led to a shift in an abusive mother becoming more hostile, strict, and controlling ways with her young child, regardless of how her child was behaving.”
The findings, she added, suggest that when physically abusive mothers experience being a nurturing parent they find it to be hard work. “It appears to quickly wear them out, perhaps because it challenges them in ways that lower-risk mothers don’t experience,” she said. “An abusive mother appears caught: When she does a good job with her child, it costs her physiologically, and it negatively affects her because it leads to more aversive parenting….”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131008091742.htm#.Ul2vhaflRJg.email

Citation:

Journal Reference:
1.Elizabeth A. Skowron, Elizabeth Cipriano-Essel, Lorna Smith Benjamin, Aaron L. Pincus, Mark J. Van Ryzin. Cardiac vagal tone and quality of parenting show concurrent and time-ordered associations that diverge in abusive, neglectful, and non-maltreating mothers.. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 2013; 2 (2): 95 DOI: 10.1037/cfp0000005
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MLA University of Oregon (2013, October 8). Abusive parenting may have a biological basis. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 16, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2013/10/131008091742.htm#.Ul2vhaflRJg.email

Here is the press release from the University of Oregon:

UO researcher finds abusive parenting may have a biological basis
EUGENE, Ore. — (Oct. 7, 2013) — Parents who physically abuse their children appear to have a physiological response that subsequently triggers more harsh parenting when they attempt parenting in warm, positive ways, according to new research.

Reporting in the quarterly journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, a five-member team, led by Elizabeth A. Skowron, a professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services in the University of Oregon College of Education, documented connections between the nervous system’s ability to calm heart rate — via electrocardiogram (ECG) measures of parasympathetic activation — and the type of parenting mothers displayed during a laboratory interaction with their preschool child.

Studies of child maltreatment have consistently found that parents who physically abuse their children tend to parent in more hostile, critical and controlling ways. Skowron’s team appears to have found evidence of a physiological basis for those patterns of aversive parenting — the use of hostile actions such as grabbing an arm or hand or using negative verbal cues in guiding a child’s behavior — in a sample of families involved with Child Protective Services.

For the experiment, mothers and children were monitored to record changes in heart rate while playing together in the lab. Parenting behavior was scored to capture positive parenting and strict, hostile control using a standard coding system.

What emerged, Skowron said, were clear distinctions between abusive, neglectful and non-maltreating mothers in their physiological responses during parenting. When abusive mothers were more warm and nurturing, they began to experience more difficulty regulating their heart rate and staying calm. This physiological-based stress response then led the abusive mothers to become more hostile and controlling toward their child a short time later in the interaction.
AUDIO:
1) Skowron on main finding, 20 seconds
2) Skowron on the challenges of intervention, 66 seconds
The same was not the case for mothers who had been previously identified as being physically neglectful or for mothers with no history of neglectful or abusive parenting.

Participants in the National Institutes of Health-funded study were 141 mothers — 94 percent Caucasian with a high school degree or less and incomes at or below $30,000 — and their children, ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old. The research focuses on tracking the effects of physiology on parenting in real time.

“Abusive mothers who try to warmly support their child when the child faced a moderate challenge displayed a physiological response that suggested they’re stressed, on alert and preparing to defend against a threat of some kind,” said Skowron, a researcher at the Child and Family Center/Prevention Science Institute at the UO. “This kind of physiological response then led to a shift in an abusive mother becoming more hostile, strict, and controlling ways with her young child, regardless of how her child was behaving.”

The findings, she added, suggest that when physically abusive mothers experience being a nurturing parent they find it to be hard work. “It appears to quickly wear them out, perhaps because it challenges them in ways that lower-risk mothers don’t experience,” she said. “An abusive mother appears caught: When she does a good job with her child, it costs her physiologically, and it negatively affects her because it leads to more aversive parenting.”

The team’s findings help to explain why abusive parenting is so resistant to most interventions, Skowron said. “Most parents who struggle with child maltreatment really love their children and want help improving their parenting skills. Our findings suggest that many are experiencing a biological response during parenting that actively interferes with their efforts to parent in warm and nurturing ways.”

The next step, she said, is exploring how to translate the new discovery into interventions specifically designed for parents struggling with child abusive. “We have to figure out how to help these high-risk parents calm themselves down more effectively and enjoy the experience of supporting their children in warm, positive ways. First, she noted, it will be important for other researchers to replicate the findings.

“Researchers at the University of Oregon continue to yield critical insights that result in more effective prevention strategies,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the UO Graduate School. “This research by Dr. Skowron revealing a potential neurobiological trigger involved in abusive parenting may lead to new interventions that could help to improve the lives of children.”

Co-authors with Skowron were Elizabeth Cipriano-Essel and Aaron L. Pincus, both of Pennsylvania State University where Skowron conducted this research, Lorna Smith Benjamin of the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute, and Mark J. Van Ryzin, research associate in the UO Child and Family Center and researcher at the Eugene-based Oregon Social Learning Center.

NIH grant RO1 MH079328 to Skowron supported the research through the National Institute of Mental Health. Additional funding was provided by the Administration for Children and Families, through its Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, as part of the Federal Child Neglect Research Consortium.

About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of “Very High Research Activity” in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

Media Contact: Jim Barlow, director of science and research communications, 541-346-3481, jebarlow@uoregon.edu

Source: Elizabeth A. Skowron, associate professor of counseling psychology, 541-346-0913, eskowron@uoregon.edu

Additional Links:
Follow UO Science on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfOregonScience
UO Science on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UO_Research
More UO Science/Research News: http://uoresearch.uoregon.edu

Note: The University of Oregon is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. In addition, there is video access to satellite uplink, and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews. http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2013/10/uo-researcher-finds-abusive-parenting-may-have-biological-basis

The goal should be:

A healthy child in a healthy family who attends a healthy school in a healthy neighborhood ©

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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Pediatrics article: Sexual abuse prevalent in teen population

10 Oct

Moi wrote about teen dating violence in Study: 1 in 3 teens are victims of dating violence: Many adults would be shocked by this report from the Chicago Tribune that many teens find dating violence normal
Ed Loos, a junior at Lake Forest High School, said a common reaction among students to Chris Brown‘s alleged attack on Rihanna goes something like this:

“Ha! She probably did something to provoke it.” In Chicago, Sullivan High School sophomore Adeola Matanmi has heard the same. “People said, ‘I would have punched her around too,’ ” Matanmi said. “And these were girls!” As allegations of battery swirl around the famous couple, experts on domestic violence say the response from teenagers just a few years younger shows the desperate need to educate this age group about dating violence. Their acceptance, or even approval, of abuse in romantic relationships is not a universal reaction. But it comes at a time when 1 in 10 teenagers has suffered such abuse and females ages 16 to 24 experience the highest rates of any age group, research shows.

The teens interviewed by the Chicago Tribune placed little worth on their lives or the lives of other women. If you don’t as the old ad tag line would say “don’t think you are worth it” why would anyone else think you are worthy of decent treatment? https://drwilda.com/2013/08/05/study-1-in-3-teens-are-victims-of-dating-violence/

Nancy Shute reported in NPR’s Many Teens Admit To Coercing Others Into Sex:

Almost 1 in 10 high school and college-aged people have forced someone into sexual activity against his or her will, a study finds. The majority of those who have done it think that the victim is at least partly to blame.
The results come from a multiyear study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was designed to look for the roots of adult sexual violence. Most adult perpetrators say they first preyed on another while still in their teens.
In adulthood, more than 1 million people are the victims of rape or sexual assault each year, according to the National Institutes of Justice. Domestic violence affects more than 2 million adults a year.
A multiple-choice online survey conducted in 2010 and 2011 asked 1,058 teenagers and young adults, ages 14 to 21, whether they’d ever “kissed, touched, or done anything sexual with another person when that person did not want you to?”
Nine percent said yes. Eight percent had kissed or touched someone when they knew the other person did not want to. Three percent got someone to give in to unwilling sex. Three percent attempted to rape the person, and 2 percent completed a rape. (The numbers don’t add up because some perpetrators admitted to more than one behavior.)
This may be the first survey to ask questions like these, and the researchers caution that because of the relatively small number of youths involved, the results aren’t definitive. But they are certainly chilling.
“I don’t get creeped out very often,” says Michele Ybarra, lead researcher of the study, which was published online in JAMA Pediatrics. “But this was wow.”
When asked who was to blame, half of the perpetrators said the victim was completely responsible; one-third said it was their own fault. “If half of the perpetrators felt the victim was responsible for this, we need to do something,” Ybarra, who is president and research director of the Center for Innovative Public Health in San Clemente, Calif.
Sixteen seems to be the age when sexual coercion becomes a real possibility, at least for boys. Almost half of the study participants said they first forced someone to have sexual activity when they were 16. But by age 18, girls had become much more involved in preying on others, to the point where they were almost as likely to be perpetrators as were boys.
Three-quarters of the victims were in a romantic relationship with the perpetrator.
The coercion used was almost always psychological, not physical. The most common tactics for forcing or trying to force sex were guilt, deliberately getting the victim drunk or arguing with or pressuring the victim. Five percent threatened to use physical force, and 8 percent did. The survey used the federal Bureau of Justice definition of rape, which includes psychological coercion as well as physical force.
The survey also looked at media use and found that perpetrators of sexual violence were more likely to watch violent X-rated materials than were the others.
By now most parents reading this are probably ready to hide. But Ybarra tells Shots these numbers show that parents need to act and well before their children are 16.
“We absolutely need to have conversations with our kids about what healthy sex is and what unhealthy sex is,” she says. Parents could say, “‘If you have to convince your partner, maybe that’s not the right way to have sex.’ Even simple messages like that are important.”
Related NPR Stories
Teen Sexual Assault: Where Does The Conversation Start?
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/28/179671126/teen-sexual-assault-where-does-the-conversation-start
How Should We Be Talking About Sex?
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/27/175466868/how-should-we-be-talking-about-sex
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230428115/many-teens-admit-to-coercing-others-into-sex

Citation:

Prevalence Rates of Male and Female Sexual Violence Perpetrators in a National Sample of Adolescents ONLINE FIRST
Michele L. Ybarra, MPH, PhD1; Kimberly J. Mitchell, PhD2
[+-] Author Affiliations
1Center for Innovative Public Health Research, San Clemente, California
2Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham
JAMA Pediatr. Published online October 07, 2013. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.2629 Text Size: A A A .Published online
Article
Tables
References
Comments .ABSTRACT.
ABSTRACT | METHODS | RESULTS | DISCUSSION | CONCLUSIONS | ARTICLE INFORMATION | REFERENCES ..Importance Sexual violence can emerge in adolescence, yet little is known about youth perpetrators—especially those not involved with the criminal justice system.
Objective To report national estimates of adolescent sexual violence perpetration and details of the perpetrator experience.
Design, Setting, and Participants Data were collected online in 2010 (wave 4) and 2011 (wave 5) in the national Growing Up With Media study. Participants included 1058 youths aged 14 to 21 years who at baseline read English, lived in the household at least 50% of the time, and had used the Internet in the last 6 months. Recruitment was balanced on youths’ biological sex and age.
Main Outcomes and Measures Forced sexual contact, coercive sex, attempted rape, and completed rape.
Results Nearly 1 in 10 youths (9%) reported some type of sexual violence perpetration in their lifetime; 4% (10 females and 39 males) reported attempted or completed rape. Sixteen years old was the mode age of first sexual perpetration (n = 18 [40%]). Perpetrators reported greater exposure to violent X-rated content. Almost all perpetrators (98%) who reported age at first perpetration to be 15 years or younger were male, with similar but attenuated results among those who began at ages 16 or 17 years (90%). It is not until ages 18 or 19 years that males (52%) and females (48%) are relatively equally represented as perpetrators. Perhaps related to age at first perpetration, females were more likely to perpetrate against older victims, and males were more likely to perpetrate against younger victims. Youths who started perpetrating earlier were more likely than older youths to get in trouble with caregivers; youths starting older were more likely to indicate that no one found out about the perpetration.
Conclusions and Relevance Sexual violence perpetration appears to emerge earlier for males than females, perhaps suggesting different developmental trajectories. Links between perpetration and violent sexual media are apparent, suggesting a need to monitor adolescents’ consumption of this material. Victim blaming appears to be common, whereas experiencing consequences does not. There is therefore urgent need for school programs that encourage bystander intervention as well as implementation of policies that could enhance the likelihood that perpetrators are identified.

Advice to Teens in Abusive Relationships

Terry Miller Shannon gives teens advice about avoiding abusive relationships She advises teens to watch for the following danger signs:

1. Sweeping you off your feet and declaring love immediately. This is the number one sign of a potentially battering relationship.

2. Jealousy: Not wanting you to have other friends. Thinking everyone around WANTS you. Expecting you to spend every second with him. Sorry, extreme jealousy isn’t a compliment – it’s a problem.

3. Controlling behavior: Keeping track of whom you’re with and where you are. Telling you what to wear. Picking your friends. Keeping you from getting a job. Taking your money. Threatening to commit suicide, to spread gossip about you, or out you if you’re part of a same-sex couple (gay and lesbian dating violence is under-reported due to pressures not to go public).

4. Violence (physical, mental, or sexual): Punching the wall. Yelling. Insults. Name-calling. Isolating you from family or friends. Slamming the door. Insisting on any kind of unwanted sexual activity. Throwing things. Pinching, pushing, spanking…enough said?

Bottom line: If you’re uncomfortable with your relationship, something’s wrong. Mind your instincts. Be realistic – don’t expect your mate to change. Don’t believe him when he tells you the way he acts is your fault. http://teenadvice.about.com/library/weekly/aa061002a.htm

Popular culture makes teens who are not involved in activities as “couples” seem like outcasts. Too often, teens pair up before they are mature enough and ready for the emotional commitment. The more activities the girl is involved in and the more sponsored group activities, where teens don’t necessarily have to be in dating relationships, lessen the dependence on an abusive relationship.

Related:

The ‘Animal House’ attitude of some college administrators doesn’t take rape seriously

The ‘Animal House’ attitude of some college administrators doesn’t take rape seriously

A tale of rape from Amherst: Sexual assault on campus

A tale of rape from Amherst: Sexual assault on campus

Sexual assault on college campuses

Sexual assault on college campuses

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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Yale University study: Athletes often endorse unhealthy food products

8 Oct

Moi wrote in Critical thinking skills for kids are crucial: The lure of Super bowl alcohol ads:
The issue is whether children in a “captive” environment have the maturity and critical thinking skills to evaluate the information contained in the ads. Advertising is about creating a desire for the product, pushing a lifestyle which might make an individual more prone to purchase products to create that lifestyle, and promoting an image which might make an individual more prone to purchase products in pursuit of that image. Many girls and women have unrealistic body image expectations which can lead to eating disorders in the pursuit of a “super model” image. What the glossy magazines don’t tell young women is the dysfunctional lives of many “super models” which may involve both eating disorders and substance abuse. The magazines don’t point out that many “glamour girls” are air-brushed or photo-shopped and that they spend hours on professional make-up and professional hairstyling in addition to having a personal trainer and stylist. Many boys look at the buff bodies of the men in the ads and don’t realize that some use body enhancing drugs. In other words, when presented with any advertising, people must make a determination what to believe. It is easy for children to get derailed because of peer pressure in an all too permissive society. Parents and schools must teach children critical thinking skills and point out often that the picture presented in advertising is often as close to reality as the bedtime fairy tail. Reality does not often involve perfection, there are warts.

See, Admongo
http://ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/admongo/html-version.shtml
and How to Help a Child With Critical Thinking Skills
http://www.livestrong.com/article/178182-how-to-help-a-child-with-critical-thinking-skills/#ixzz2Jlv5L6HR
https://drwilda.com/tag/exposure-to-alcohol-advertisements-and-teenage-alcohol-related-problems/

Katy Bachman reported in the Adweek article, Study: Athletes Send Mixed Messages to Youth by Marketing Junk Food: LeBron James, Peyton Manning, Serena Williams are the worst offenders:

LeBron James, Peyton Manning and Serena Williams are tops in their sports and make great spokespeople for any marketer. But they are also at the top of a less-flattering ranker—endorsing junk food marketed to youth.
The NBA, NFL and WTA champs were the top three athlete endorsers promoting unhealthy foods in TV, radio, print and online ads reaching teens 12 to 17, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale….
While the food and beverage industry has committed to advertise to children only food that meets specific nutrition criteria under the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, the self-regulation only applies to children under 12. The Yale study points out that once children reach a certain age, they quickly become a target….
“It’s as if the dollars blind them to the fact they are role models,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Of the 512 brand endorsements associated with the top 100 athletes in the study, food and beverage brands represented the second-highest endorsement category for athletes at 23.8 percent, surpassed only by sporting goods and apparel at 28.3 percent.
Overall, the top 100 athletes endorsed 122 food and beverage brands. Sports beverages were the largest individual category endorsed by athletes, followed by soft drinks and fast food. Most of the 46 beverages endorsed by athletes received all of their calories from added sugar….http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/study-athletes-send-mixed-messages-youth-marketing-junk-food-152962

Here is the press release from Yale:

Unhealthy food marketed to youth through athlete endorsements
By Megan Orciari
October 7, 2013
Professional athletes are often paid large amounts of money to endorse commercial products. But the majority of the food and beverage brands endorsed by professional athletes are for unhealthy products like sports beverages, soft drinks, and fast food, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. The study appears in the November issue of Pediatrics.
Analyzing data collected in 2010 from Nielson and AdScope, an advertisement database, the study reveals that adolescents aged 12 to 17 viewed the most television ads for food endorsed by athletes. Previous research by public health advocates has criticized the use of athlete endorsements in food marketing campaigns for often promoting unhealthy food and sending mixed messages to youth about health, but this is the first study to examine the extent and reach of such marketing.
Researchers selected 100 professional athletes to study based on Businessweek’s 2010 Power 100 report, which ranked athletes according to their endorsement value and prominence in their sport. Information about each athlete’s endorsements was gathered from the Power 100 list and AdScope. Researchers then sorted the endorsements into categories: food/beverages, automotive, consumer goods, service providers, entertainment, finance, communications/office, sporting goods/apparel, retail, airline, and other. The nutritional quality of the foods featured in athlete-endorsement advertising was assessed, along with the marketing data.
Of the 512 brands associated with these athletes, food and beverage brands were the second largest category of endorsements behind sporting goods. “We found that LeBron James (NBA), Peyton Manning (NFL), and Serena Williams (tennis) had more food and beverage endorsements than any of the other athletes examined. Most of the athletes who endorsed food and beverages were from the NBA, followed by the NFL, and MLB,” said Marie Bragg, the study’s lead author and a doctoral candidate at Yale.
Sports beverages were the largest individual category of athlete endorsements, followed by soft drinks, and fast food. Most — 93% — of the 46 beverages being endorsed by athletes received all of their calories from added sugars.
Food and beverage advertisements associated with professional athletes had far-reaching exposure, with ads appearing nationally on television, the Internet, the radio, in newspapers, and magazines.
“The promotion of energy-dense, nutrient-poor products by some of the world’s most physically fit and well-known athletes is an ironic combination that sends mixed messages about diet and health,” said Bragg.
Bragg and co-authors assert that professional athletes should be aware of the health value of the products they are endorsing, and should use their status and celebrity to promote healthy messages to youth.
Other authors include Swati Yanamadala, Christina Roberto, and Jennifer L. Harris of the Rudd Center at Yale, and Kelly Brownell of Duke University.
The study was supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Rudd Foundation.

Citation:

Athlete Endorsements in Food Marketing
1. Marie A. Bragg, MS, MPhila,
2. Swati Yanamadala, BAb,
3. Christina A. Roberto, PhDa,c,
4. Jennifer L. Harris, MBA, PhDa, and
5. Kelly D. Brownell, PhDd
+ Author Affiliations
1. aRudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut;
2. bStanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California;
3. cDepartment of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; and
4. dSanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: This study quantified professional athletes’ endorsement of food and beverages, evaluated the nutritional quality of endorsed products, and determined the number of television commercial exposures of athlete-endorsement commercials for children, adolescents, and adults.
METHODS: One hundred professional athletes were selected on the basis of Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2010 Power 100 rankings, which ranks athletes according to their endorsement value and prominence in their sport. Endorsement information was gathered from the Power 100 list and the advertisement database AdScope. Endorsements were sorted into 11 endorsement categories (eg, food/beverages, sports apparel). The nutritional quality of the foods featured in athlete-endorsement advertisements was assessed by using a Nutrient Profiling Index, whereas beverages were evaluated on the basis of the percentage of calories from added sugar. Marketing data were collected from AdScope and Nielsen.
RESULTS: Of 512 brands endorsed by 100 different athletes, sporting goods/apparel represented the largest category (28.3%), followed by food/beverages (23.8%) and consumer goods (10.9%). Professional athletes in this sample were associated with 44 different food or beverage brands during 2010. Seventy-nine percent of the 62 food products in athlete-endorsed advertisements were energy-dense and nutrient-poor, and 93.4% of the 46 advertised beverages had 100% of calories from added sugar. Peyton Manning (professional American football player) and LeBron James (professional basketball player) had the most endorsements for energy-dense, nutrient-poor products. Adolescents saw the most television commercials that featured athlete endorsements of food.
CONCLUSIONS: Youth are exposed to professional athlete endorsements of food products that are energy-dense and nutrient-poor.

Our goal should be:

A Healthy Child In A Healthy Family Who Attends A Healthy School In A Healthy Neighborhood. ©

Related:

More school districts facing a financial crunch are considering school ads
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/more-school-districts-facing-a-financial-crunch-are-considering-school-ads/

Should there be advertising in schools?
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/should-there-be-advertising-in-schools/

Talking to your teen about risky behaviors
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/talking-to-your-teen-about-risky-behaviors/

Television cannot substitute for quality childcare
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/television-cannot-substitute-for-quality-childcare/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews ©
http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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