Maternal and Child Health Library

This and past issues of the MCH Alert are available at http://www.mchlibrary.info/alert/archives.html.

February 20, 2009

Special Notice: The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has issued a statement on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' decision in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding. The DHHS statement is available at http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/02/20090212a.html. Autism decisions and background information on the proceeding and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program are available from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims at http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/5026.

1. SERIES OF BRIEFS FOCUS ON DISPARITIES IN CHILD HEALTH

Trends in Child Health, 1997-2006: Assessing Black-White Disparities highlights differences in health outcomes among black children and white children and then examines how child health indicators vary by sociodemographic characteristics. The issue brief, the first in a series produced by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, is based on an analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey for the years 1997 through 2006. The brief presents findings for non-Hispanic white children and non-Hispanic black children under age 18 on the following health indicators: low birthweight, health status (as evaluated by a family member), recent unmet oral health needs, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis, lifetime asthma diagnosis, learning disability diagnosis, and activity limitation. For each health indicator, in each year between 1997 and 2006, comparisons are made first between children of the two racial groups as a whole; then, black children and white children in families with characteristics corresponding to nine sociodemographic variables are compared. The brief concludes with a discussion of gaps in health indicators between black children and white children by sociodemographic subgroup, and the influence of specific sociodemographic variables (educational attainment, poverty, health insurance) on health indicators. The brief is available at http://www.jointcenter.org/publications_recent_publications/health/trends_in_child_health_1997_2006_assessing_black_white_disparities.

• Most (91.7 percent) agreed that dental treatment should be part of prenatal care.
• Two-thirds (67.7 percent) reported interest in receiving CDE on care for pregnant patients.
• The odds of agreeing that it was worth their time to counsel pregnant women about the transmission of caries-causing bacteria were higher among respondents who had graduated in the preceding 10 years (recent graduates) than it was among those who had graduated 11 or more years before (less-recent graduates), and it was higher among those who had received CDE on a pregnancy-related topic compared with those who had not.
• Recent graduates were less likely than less-recent graduates to give the preferred response on scaling and root planing for pregnant women (i.e., that they provide these procedures) but were more likely to agree that a full-mouth radiograph is appropriate.
• Recent graduates were more likely than less-recent graduates to give the preferred response concerning recommending aspirin to pregnant women (i.e., that they avoid recommending it), and female dentists were more likely than male dentists to give the preferred response.

• Results suggest some degree of clustering of individual infections that might indicate a shared environment of pathogen exposure or susceptibility.
• There were educational gradients in prevalence for most individual infections and higher overall levels of infection for non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American children, compared with white children.
• Non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American children had a higher likelihood of infection with several individual pathogens, compared with white children.
• The coefficients on all infections were positive in regards to asthma, suggesting increased odds of reporting asthma in the presence of infections, although only one infection (hepatitis A) reached statistical significance.
• In models of height, the coefficients on all infections, both adjusted and unadjusted, were negative, suggesting a decrease in age-specific height with the presence of infection.