Should you take your child to a nearby “walk-in” clinic for what you think is a minor medical problem?
A Wall Street Journal article reported that The American Academy of Pediatrics has expressed concerns about retail health clinics.
We commonly hear that two-thirds of all adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese, and that adult obesity has risen at an alarming rate over the past 30 years. What is less commonly heard is that the rate of obesity has risen nearly three times faster in adolescents as compared to adults in the past 30 years! Importantly, 70 percent of obese teens become obese adults, and adult obesity has been linked to other serious diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and several forms of cancer. Thus, the teen years represent a particularly crucial time to reach kids and help them build healthier habits that they can continue into adulthood.
The opening this year of Mount Sinai Doctors Brooklyn Heights brings coordinated, efficient and quality outpatient medical care to the borough for the very first time. Medical care at this office, located at 300 Cadman Plaza West (One Pierrepoint Plaza) on the 17th and 18th floors, is community-based and convenient. I am the medical director of what our patients have been referring to as “medical services under one roof” or a “medical mall”. I’m also the medical director of WESTMED Practice Partners, a company that builds and manages large centers like this for comprehensive outpatient care.
Children with food allergies are frequently bullied by classmates but experience less psychological distress when their parents are aware of it, according to researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, who surveyed 251 families during their visits to Mount Sinai’s Jaffe Food Allergy Institute in 2011.
The study—published online in the December 24, 2012, issue of Pediatrics—found that as many as 45.4 percent of the children, ages 8-17, reported being bullied, and 31.5 percent reported that food allergy was the reason.
“Parents and clinicians need to ask children with food allergies if they have been bullied,” says the study’s lead author Eyal Shemesh, MD, Chief of the Division of Behavioral and Developmental Health in the Department of Pediatrics at The Mount Sinai Medical Center. “Bullying is prevalent. Kids often don’t tell their parents, and it is important to know this is an issue.”
The Mount Sinai Children’s Center Foundation (CCF) hosted its 26th annual Big Apple Circus benefit in November, raising more than $735,000 to support the Department of Pediatrics at the Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai.
Over the years, the benefit has raised more than $14.7 million for the Department of Pediatrics. The proceeds have been used to renovate the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and undertake current renovations in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Each year, children who attend the benefit receive a backpack loaded with donated products such as books, DVDs, stuffed animals, and toy trucks. This year, the CCF donated 100 extra backpacks to children living in two Brooklyn communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy, Gerritsen Beach and Sheepshead Bay.