Some news about children's health caught my eye last month caught my eye, something we don't hear much about.

 The World Health Organization reported that each year, 950,000 kids die from injuries.  That's genuinely disheartening.  There's nothing more unnatural or unjust than a parent who outlives their child.

 Most disappointing, however, is that 90% of those injuries could have been prevented. 

 In the United States,  the CDC  shows that 12,000 kids lose their lives from preventable accidents and injuries:  for children under one, the leading cause of death is suffocation. For children 1-4, it's drowning, and for kids 5-19 its automobile accidents. 

The message here is simple--with some common sense, a little parental education, perhaps some legislation and just a little money, a lot of parents would live to see their kids grow up. 

Yet one has to wonder where our priorities are when it comes to our kids in this country.  This news I just read to you didn't show up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or USA Today.  It wasn't discussed on CNN.  Instead, I read about it in a small tabloid published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, sent out just to those of us who are members (ie, doctors who are pediatricians)

Enter Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.  A decade ago, I read and was struck by Dr. Glassner's book The Culture of Fear.  In it, he asked a simple question:  "Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?"  He went on to show readers that, indeed, raw data doesn't support our fears about many issues we hear about in the media, that even though it bleeds, it shouldn't lead. 

He focused an entire chapter on children and their health:  "Youth at Risk:  Faulty Diagnoses and Callous Cures." 

"America's children face far graver dangers than parents realize. Journalists, politicians and advocacy organizations reiterate that conclusion incessantly. "  is how Dr. Glassner began that chapter. 

But those dangers, he pointed out, weren't the things we've been hearing about, deconstructing hype about teen suicide, attention deficit disorder, crack babies, youth crime, and many other hot button isues on the way. 

 One example he used was about the "epidemic" of youth gambling, which received a lot of media  coverage during the 1990s (USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, and others ran extensive pieces about it), to the point that "every parent ought to worry about whether her son or daughter has become addicted to gambling." 

But Glassner pointed out that the statistics were weak, and that most kids who made friendly bets about the Super Bowl with their pals or just bought a Lotto ticket.  And kids who did gamble did so due to other underlying problems--an outlet for depression, anxiety or abuse.  Once those stresses eased, so did their gambling.

Another example, crack babies, big during the 1980s and early 1990s, a topic that graced many headlines and magazine covers--"Just to get one crack baby ready for school costs $40,000 per year...for all 8974 babies [identified nationally] taht oculd add up to $1.5 billion before they are 5 years old!" 

But despite hype like that, the media flip-flopped when research (much of it emerging during the time they were stigmatizing crack babies) showed that kids were functioning much like their peers, and that many of the problems of drug-exposed babies were due to poor socioeconomic conditions they were born into--fight poverty to fight crack.  But who listened? 

Trends like this seem to continue unabated.  We have advocacy groups out there screaming loudly about "epidemics" of peanut allergies, autism, and other child health "emergencies."  (how many of us really know what an epidemic really is, other than alarmist sentiment?). While these problems certainly aren't trivial problems for children, parents, or society, our fear seems to be out of proportion to reality ie, the statistics that measure them. 

On the other hand, consider how hard it is for a group like the National Safe Kids Campaign, which advocates for injury prevention, to get traction.  Ever seen them on Larry King Live?

Mom and dad, what about your ungated, uncovered swimming pool? How about a World Injury Prevention Day to put things into perspective for all of us?

Injuries bleed, so why can't they lead?

 www.rahulkparikh.com

www.twitter.com/docrkp

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As an aside, Dr. Glasser and I exchanged emails recently--he told me his publisher is putting out an updated version which will address some more current issues..