Family of four cooking a healthy dinner together, at their home. Play

Healthy New Year’s Resolutions for Kids

Ring in 2017 with healthy New Years Resolutions that the whole family can do together. Tips about healthy eating habits and how to keep them all year long from our Pediatric Weight Control program which is now enrolling patients for January.

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Shaping a Brighter Future

In medicine we often refer to the “natural history of disease”— the normal course that a disease takes in an individual if no treatment occurs. In the case of congenital heart disease, the “natural history” was often death or, at best, survival with significant limitations. Fortunately, that history has changed.

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Healthy living in the New Year

Most of us will make a New Year’s resolution – maybe to lose weight, quit smoking or drink less – but only one in 10 of us will achieve our goal. This story is about a group of colleagues at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health who worked more than year to eat right and improve their health.

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What’s wrong with baby Wyatt?

What should have been one of their family’s happiest moments quickly turned somber as they feared the seriousness of Wyatt’s condition. The dermatology team suspected it could be a skin disease, but they couldn’t know for sure. Wyatt needed to be transferred to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

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Chikungunya is on its way to a neighborhood near you

Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that has arrived from the tropics to affect patients in many U.S. states, usually strikes with a fever, aches, and joint pain. But sometimes it’s much worse. Stanford pediatric infectious disease expert Desiree LaBeaud, MD, is trying to figure out why some people are hit hard, and others experience a relatively minor illness, according to recent news coverage from NPR.

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An optimist’s approach to improving global child health

Globally, more than six million children die before their fifth birthday each year, most having been born into poverty. While great strides have been made over the last few decades in reducing global child mortality, some countries, like Pakistan, have lagged behind. In a recent Stanford podcast, Anita Zaidi, MD, an internationally renowned pediatrician and director of the Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, spoke about the state of child health in her home country of Pakistan and what it takes to lift a nation up.

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Cure is not enough for young cancer survivors

People that survive cancer at a young age are expected to live many decades after diagnosis and treatment, so they are the most vulnerable population to long-term damaging effects from cancer therapy. Stanford’s Karen Effinger, MD, MS, and Michael Link, MD, explore this issue in an editorial published today in JAMA Oncology.

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Helping kids with chronic medical conditions make the jump to adult care

Specialists who treat chronically ill adolescents have long recognized the challenges related to this patient population: Young adults may be grown in body, but they aren’t always ready psychologically or socially to take full responsibility for consistently following complicated medical routines and practicing lifestyle restrictions. Nor are most adult care doctors trained in the after-effects of childhood cancer, for instance, or the lifelong need to monitor adults with childhood heart repairs.

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From A to ZZZZs: The trouble with teen sleep

Teenagers who don’t sleep enough pay a heavy price, potentially compromising their physical and mental health. Study after study in the medical literature sounds the alarm over what can go wrong when teens suffer chronic sleep deprivation: drowsy driving incidents, poor academic performance, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and even suicide attempts. “I think high school is the real danger spot in terms of sleep deprivation,” says Stanford sleep expert William Dement, MD, PhD. “It’s a huge problem.”

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Helping newborns through song

Instead of drugs or fancy devices, a small village in India is using dhollak and dafali — drums traditional to the region — to spread awareness about post-natal care and to battle infant mortality. The effort started as part of a public-health research project led by Stanford global health expert Gary Darmstadt, MD.

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Keeping kids safe at Halloween

We know Halloween is a special time for kids to dress up as their favorite super hero, princess or scary zombie while getting their hands on those coveted goodies. But with all of the excitement that comes with this festive time of year, it’s important to be aware of how to keep kids safe.

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The rocket men and their breathtaking invention

It’s a gadget straight out of Star Trek — a breath analyzer that may someday quickly and noninvasively detect everything from diabetes to cancers. In a new Stanford Medicine magazine story, you can read about how three Stanford rocket-combustion experts designed and tested a Breathalyzer-like device to measure toxic ammonia levels in critically ill children, all in about a year.

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Stanford Medicine magazine tells why a healthy childhood matters

I’ve forgotten most of my childhood experiences – which is perfectly normal. But apparently my body remembers many of those experiences – and I learned while editing the new Stanford Medicine magazine that’s normal too. The fall issue’s special report, “Childhood: The road ahead,” is full of stories of researchers realizing the impact early experiences can have on adult health. Some of their discoveries are surprising.

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Why Babies Don’t Have Freckles

Freckles are a phenomenon that occurs when genetically predisposed people (often those with fair skin, red hair, and light eyes) are exposed to UV light over time, according to Joyce Teng, MD, director of pediatric dermatology for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

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Mom of Multiples #2: The Whys of Multiples

Multiples attract attention, there’s no getting around it. People approach you in public, sometimes just to look at your babies and say “Aw,” sometimes to tell you about twins they know, sometimes to tell you they are a twin! Amy Letter shares more in part two of her series on having multiples.

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Phoenix baby saved by heart surgery pioneer

Baby Jackson Lane’s heart problems were “about as dramatic as you can get.” Famed surgeon Dr. Frank Hanley and his team stepped in to save Jackson’s life. “We are just so lucky that we found Dr. Hanley and that our son fought for his life,” said mom Elyse.

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Moderation, part 2: Good things come in small packages

From the first King Size KitKat bar that finds its way into a “lucky” trick-or-treater’s stash, to the “generous” servings of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie that are dished up at Thanksgiving feasts, I have one major learning objective for my kids: size matters. We can enjoy absolutely any food, as long as it’s consumed in moderation.

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Moderation, Part 1: Let Them Eat Cake (just not too much)

As the holiday season approaches, my excitement about the upcoming festivities is sometimes mixed with a little uncertainty. Halloween, Diwali, Thanksgiving, Hanukah and Christmas: No matter which of these holidays you celebrate, they usually involve a whole lot of eating — and an endless stream of treats.

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Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos Extend a $2.25 Million Challenge Grant to Fund Innovative Clinical Food Allergy Research at Stanford

Groundbreaking food allergy research at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford has received a major boost through the creation of a challenge grant by Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. Severe food allergies are a growing epidemic, with rates having doubled in the last decade. One out of every 13 children is affected, and over 30 percent are thought to have allergies to more than one food.

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Make this year a healthy school year

With the days of summer vacation soon coming to an end, parents are getting in gear to send their kids back to school. Along with stocking up on school supplies and buying new clothes, it’s also a good time to think about their health needs.

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San Francisco Giants “Donate Life” Day

On July 30, the San Francisco Giants held their 17th Annual Organ Donor Awareness Day. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford has been a part of this event for several years. It’s an opportunity for community to celebrate the lives that have been saved through organ donation