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Early Teen Drinkers at Higher Risk for Alcoholism Right Click to Download MP3 File Brief Description: Transcript: Alexander: The America's Children Report gives the American people an annual report card on how the country's children are doing. It measures their progress — or lack thereof — in a wide variety of measures: In education, in health and their general well-being. By doing so each year it allows us to track progress over time — things that are going well, things that are not going so well. And for those not going so well, what we need to focus on changing so that we improve that status. Schmalfeldt: Dr. Alexander pointed to the decrease in the number of kids exposed to second hand smoke. Alexander: One of the most important is that children are exposed to less tobacco smoke than they were a decade ago. Ten years ago, 88 percent of children had a marker in their blood that indicates exposure to second hand tobacco smoke. That's gone in ten years down from 88 percent to 59 percent. Still too high, but a major improvement. And this reflects their exposure to second hand smoke as well as smoking themselves. It's a consequence of several things. Their parents are less likely to smoke in the home, the kids are less likely to smoke themselves, and public laws have outlawed smoking in public places. So all of this has combined to reduce the exposure of kids to smoke. This is in combination with high school seniors being less likely to smoke themselves, down from 14 percent to 12 percent. This is a significant improvement and continues a long term trend. This is extremely important from a public health standpoint because avoiding cigarette smoking is one of the best things people can do to protect their health. Schmalfeldt: Dr. Alexander said there was more good news to be found in the decline of teen births. Alexander: Another positive development recorded in this report is the continued decline of births to teenagers, now at the lowest level ever recorded in the United States. This has been particularly marked in the African-American population that had a very high rate to start with. This is an extremely important development from a public health standpoint because teens who give birth to infants, and the infants themselves, are both at high risk for adverse consequences in terms of poverty, adverse health problems and other disabilities throughout their lifetime. Schmalfeldt: Yet there was some mixed news in the report. The birth rate for unmarried women and the proportion of infants with low birth weight both increased from the previous year. Yet, the infant mortality rate has gone down. Alexander: These are opposite trends. Lower infant mortality is good. Higher low birth weight rate is not good. What is particularly striking is that we have achieved a lower infant mortality rate despite of the fact that a cause of infant mortality — low birth rate — is increasing. And it's because of our research and our application of research in improving the survival of low birth rate and very low birth rate infants that we're able to improve infant mortality at the same time that the low birth weight rate has gone up. We really need to focus, though, on the problem of low birth weight. It's gone from 7.9 to 8.1 percent. And that's much too high. Women need to seek care from a health care provider as soon as they discover they're pregnant, keep a regular schedule of prenatal visits, and allow us to detect any problems that are occurring with the pregnancy as soon as possible so that we can intervene and try to prevent low birth weight. Schmalfeldt: The Forum's website at http://childstats.gov has all the data updates and detailed statistical information from this year's report. From the National Institutes of Health, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt in Bethesda, Maryland. |
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This page was last reviewed on July 21, 2006 . |
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National Institutes of Health (NIH) |
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