If your kiddo gets a prescription for amoxicillin, a widely used antibiotic, you may want to ask the pediatrician if another medicine would be just as good. According to public health experts, Oregon is experiencing a deepening shortage of amoxicillin, and asking pediatricians for options, of which there are many, can help.
Here’s what seems to be causing the current shortage: Sometimes children get a bacterial infection when they’re fighting a virus like RSV or the flu, both of which have dramatically spiked statewide in the last few weeks. For instance, this spike has hospitals throughout the state so overcrowded with pediatric patients that Gov. Brown issued an executive order allowing them to shift staffs, and draw from a pool of volunteer physicians and nurses.
Experts also suggest that if your usual pharmacy is out of amoxicillin, that you may have some success checking other area pharmacies.
New School Choice Poll: Formed in 2021, Oregon Moms Union would like to see school choice back on Oregon’s docket, and they’ve commissioned a poll showing Oregonians just may agree with them. Polling firm Nelson Research, who did the work for OMU, reported 73% of Oregon voters support school choice. Among Oregon Democrats polled, 60% were in favor.
OMU can be fairly described as somewhat right of center, for instance, filing suit to repeal Oregon’s requirement that teachers be vaccinated and, their site does have forms for parents to opt their children out of sex education, physical and mental health screenings and student surveys. However, Nelson Research has been used by numerous Oregon cities, schools and associations, including the City of Corvallis.
Four Pawed Holiday Gift Conundrum: Awaking from our Thanksgiving induced food coma, we see that gift seeking season has arrived in earnest. For some of us, visions of prancing pet paws dance in our imaginations as the perfect present, and the ASPCA says that could be a good thing, depending on a few factors:
- You should only give pets as gifts to children who have expressed a sustained interest in owning one. Also, consider if your child can and will help in caring for a new pet.
- For a kiddo under age 12, the parents should be ready and eager to assume care for the animal. If you’re an uncle or aunt or grandparent – confirm the parents willingness before seeking a pet.
- Consider if the parents and children receiving a pet have a free enough schedule to help assure a pet’s easy transition into the home. This is especially important during the holidays and other busy times.
Some on our staff, however, believe that giving pets as a gift can send the unintended message that the animal is a plaything, and disposable, and point out that a pet should be seen as a commitment – a relationship in which we receive, but more importantly give love and care.
It is worth noting that a pet can have health problems that go undetected until they live fulltime with someone, and conversely, it may be discovered that a household member has allergies that nobody was aware of. Under any circumstances, it can be heartbreaking if it turns out that a pet can’t stay with a family, and for a child, that memory can become associated with the holidays.
Whether for holiday or not, if you do choose to bring a pet into your household, please consider adopting from a local shelter like Heartland Humane Society or Safehaven Human Society.
Pregnancy and Traffic Don’t Mix Well: A recently published study from Oregon State University has found that traffic congestion is linked to decreased birthweight for full-term babies born to parents living near areas of heavy traffic, such as highways and freeways.
Though the decrease seems relatively small, researchers say the cumulative effect of stop-and-go traffic on top of baseline air pollution from cars and other environmental contaminants could have significant consequences at the population level, affecting up to 1.3 million babies per year based on location.
The researchers found birthweights were an average of 29 grams, or about 1 ounce, lower for babies in the group with the highest exposure compared with babies with the lowest exposure.
“We’ve had all these models to predict pollution, but they can’t measure congestion. With 10,000 vehicles on a road, if those 10,000 vehicles are doing stop-and-go traffic, there’s a lot more pollution that’s coming from cars,” said co-author Perry Hystad, an associate professor in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences. “There are health impacts specific from congestion that are not included in any environmental risk assessment or cost-benefit analysis, and those should start to be included.”
Low birthweight can lead to a variety of problems for infants, including trouble breathing and neurological issues, but at a population level, researchers are looking more at long-term effects.
“There’s a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive impacts, premature mortality; a lot of long-term, life-course impacts,” Hystad said. “It’s not necessarily the acute events that happen during birth.”
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, looked at 579,122 full-term births from 2015-2016 in Texas and matched maternal addresses with data from the Texas’ Most Congested Roadways database to map out proximity to heavy traffic areas.
Specifically, researchers examined “traffic delay,” defined as the total person-hours of delay on the roadway multiplied by the length of each road segment in the buffer distances around maternal residences. Using traffic delay, they were able to calculate congestion emissions to learn the total pounds of carbon dioxide emitted by the cars in those areas.
After adjusting for sociodemographic factors and environmental co-exposures, results showed that traffic delay within 500 meters of maternal residence was associated with an average birthweight decrease of 9 grams when comparing the highest- and lowest-exposure groups. Babies born to parents who lived 300 and 100 meters from roadways experienced slightly larger impacts.
To put that in perspective, Hystad said, prior research has found that maternal smoking leads to a roughly 150-gram decrease in birthweight, which is 5.3 ounces. An average full-term baby in the U.S. weighs about 3,300 grams, which is 7.3 pounds.
Based on roadway proximity to residential areas throughout the country, the researchers estimate that 1.3 million babies are born each year in regions close enough to be affected by pollution from congestion, roughly 27% of all births in the U.S.
“A 9-gram decrease alone isn’t clinically significant, but this is sort of an indicator of the biological impacts that are happening, which will push some babies into a clinically relevant adverse impact,” Hystad said. “Often we’ll see this with air pollution — we’ll see a 2-3% increase in some impact, like mortality or cardiovascular disease — but when you multiply that by 27% of all births, that does translate into a substantial potential impact.”
Furthermore, researchers estimate that 260,000 babies born at full term each year live in the highest-exposure zones where they observed the largest magnitude of impact from congestion.
Now that they can measure congestion, Hystad said, it is important to include these findings in policy and regulation discussions, especially because the highest-traffic areas tend to be concentrated near socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods and disproportionately affect minoritized populations.
Unlike tailpipe emissions which are largely regulated at the federal level, traffic congestion is something that can be addressed in the context of local programs and policies, he said.
“How do you target methods to reduce exposures that happen in very localized areas? It can be as simple as putting up sound barriers or vegetation barriers, or using zoning approaches and saying you can’t build a school or a daycare within 500 meters of a highway,” he said. “One thing we wanted to be very cognizant about is that we’re not promoting this idea of ‘We need bigger highways.’ That’s not going to solve the problem.”
Lead author on the current study was Mary Willis, a recent postdoctoral scholar at OSU who now works at Boston University.
– By Advocate Staff
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