Login
Family Fights for Bill Stopping Hospitals From Denying Transplants Over Vaccines
A 13-year-old heart patient is now eligible for a transplant after a conflict with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital over its policies. Adaline Deal has two rare heart conditions, but her parents say she was initially not allowed on the transplant list at Children’s because she did not have her flu and COVID-19 vaccines. Jeneen Deal said that incident in February was a low point for Adaline Deal, but things turned around just a few months later.
Jeneen Deal says Adaline Deal’s doctors waived the vaccine policy for her individual case. The doctors still informed them of the risks. “They just said with her being [unvaccinated], she’ll be immunosuppressed,” Jeneen Deal said. “And I said, ‘Yes, we understand that, but we are confident that she doesn’t need those vaccinations.’ They said, ‘Okay, we’ll work with you.’”
In October, Adaline Deal was in the hospital for six days as her condition worsened. Jeneen Deal says she was going to have the transplant, but it fell through, so Adaline Deal remains under constant care at home. A 13-year-old heart patient is now eligible for a transplant after a conflict with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital over its policies.
Despite living in Indiana, the Deal family is supporting a bill in the Ohio State House to forbid hospitals from refusing to operate due to “religious convictions.” H.B. 112 will be heard by the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Nov. 5. “If they don’t want vaccinations, or whatever else, it’s the person’s choice,” Jeneen Deal said. “And hospitals can’t say, ‘No, if you don’t do this, then you’re not going to get put on the transplant list,’ like for her example.”
How a Radical Experiment to Bring a Forest Into a Preschool Transformed Children’s Health
Aurora Nikula, five, is having a normal day at her nursery. She is making a cake out of sand and mud, adding in make-believe carrots, potatoes and meat. “It’s overcooked,” she says as she splashes water in, then adds another dollop of sand. “More sugar, it tastes better,” she says. A handful of mud goes in, and the dish evolves into a chocolate cake.
Aki Sinkkonen, a principal scientist with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, is watching. He’s also very interested in Aurora’s cake, but for different reasons. “Perfect,” he says, admiring the way she is mixing soil, sand and leaves and then putting it on her face. “She’s really getting her hands in it.” To a hygiene-conscious kindergarten, this could be a problem, but at Humpula daycare centre in Lahti, north of Helsinki, children are encouraged to get muddy.
Across Finland, 43 daycare centers have been awarded a total of €1m (£830,000) to rewild yards and to increase children’s exposure to the microscopic biodiversity — such as bacteria and fungi — that lives in nature. We already know that access to the outdoors is important for children and their development. But this study goes one step further. It is part of a growing body of research linking two layers of biodiversity.
There is the outer layer — the more familiar vision of biodiversity, made up of soil, water, plants, animals and microbial life, that lives in the forest, playground (or any other environment). And then there is the inner layer: the biodiversity that lives within and upon the human body, including the gut, skin and airways. Increasingly, scientists are learning that our health is intimately linked to our surroundings, and to the ecological health of the world around us. The first 1,000 days of human life — when the brain and body are most rapidly developing — are considered particularly crucial.
Telehealth Initiative Launches in Four Rural School Districts
North Carolina Health News reported:
The North Carolina Community Schools Coalition (the Coalition) gathered representatives from four northeastern NC districts on Oct. 15 to kick off a new telehealth service for students and staff. Seven schools are participating in this pilot.
Melissa McDonald is director of services for the Coalition and said the organization started to think about health interventions in school back in May 2024. According to McDonald, leadership in each district identified the access to health care as an issue for their students and staff.
“Whether it was the doctor’s office is just really far away, or getting parents to be able to get to the school, then have to take their kid to the doctor, and get back — those are really big challenges that they (school districts) were seeing,” said McDonald.
A possible solution? Bringing access to health care and providers to the students via telehealth appointments at school. The VMC will ensure that different providers are available for telehealth screenings for four of the five school days.
Students must have signed consent forms before using the service and the Community School Coordinators are currently promoting the service and educating parents. These Community School Coordinators are full-time employees of the school who work in tandem with the organization and help facilitate programs and partnerships like this one. Parents will still be notified when a student needs an appointment, but ideally they won’t have to leave their jobs or homes to come get a sick kid.
Some Head Start Preschools Shutter as Government Shutdown Continues
The government shutdown is triggering a wave of closures of Head Start centers, leaving working parents scrambling for child care and shutting some of the nation’s neediest children out of preschool. Dozens of centers are missing out on federal grant payments that were due to arrive Nov. 1. Some say they’ll close indefinitely, while others are staying afloat with emergency funding from local governments and school districts.
The closures mean Head Start students — who come from low-income households, are homeless or are in foster care — are missing out on preschool, where they are fed two meals a day and receive therapy vital to their development.
“Children love school, and the fact that they can’t go is breaking their hearts,” said Sarah Sloan, who oversees small-town Head Start centers in Scioto County, Ohio. Staff told families they planned to close Monday. “It’s hampering our families’ ability to put food on the table and to know that their children are safe during the day.”
Character.AI to Ban Children Under 18 From Talking to Its Chatbots
Artificial intelligence startup Character.AI will ban kids from having conversations with chatbots on its platform following growing pressure from lawmakers and a raft of lawsuits alleging the company’s so-called characters are responsible for harms to children.
The company said on Oct. 29 that by Nov. 25 it will stop users under the age of 18 from having open-ended conversations with its chatbots, which users can create and talk to. The characters range from digital representations of popular video-game heroes to mimics of celebrities like billionaire Elon Musk.
Until the ban takes effect, the company said it will limit the amount of time that kids are able to talk with its chatbots; this will start at two hours per day and go down over the following weeks.
