THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702230178
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 156 lines
The numbers tell the story of children's health problems in Hampton Roads:
The region's teenage pregnancy rate is nearly one third higher than the state's.
It has 42 percent of the state's pediatric HIV cases, but only 23 percent of the state's children.
About one out of every four pregnant women don't receive early prenatal care, compared with about one out of every six statewide.
These figures, included in the most comprehensive report ever compiled on children's health in Hampton Roads, will be presented to the public Monday during a two-hour town meeting in Norfolk.
The ``Report on the Health of Children in Hampton Roads'' lists 10 areas in which children's health in this region, which includes the Peninsula and the Eastern Shore, is significantly worse than the health of children in the rest of the state.
The areas identified include asthma, lack of breastfeeding, failure to immunize, child abuse, low-birthweight babies, accidental injuries and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders.
The report shows ``that in some areas of our society, we don't value our children enough,'' said Larry K. Pickering, director of the Center for Pediatric Research, a joint program between Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and Eastern Virginia Medical School.
The center's grass-roots organization, the Consortium for Infant and Child Health, or CINCH, spent the past year collecting information on more than 65 children's health issues.
Many of the problems outlined in the document - teen pregnancy, low birthweight babies, lack of prenatal care, HIV/AIDS rates - are intertwined, linked by poverty, a transient population and a lack of regional cooperation, said several people who worked on the report.
``They are the medical outcomes of social problems,'' said Dr. Edward H. Karotkin, a neonatologist at Children's Hospital.
Monday, members of the consortium will do more than just hand out copies of their numbers-jammed report. They will ask their audience - including city and community leaders, elected officials, and health-care providers - to rank the problems in order of importance.
Then the consortium, composed of volunteers from more than 100 community organizations, will tackle the top three. They'll write grants, ask for funds and design programs to improve children's health in Hampton Roads.
It's a strategy that Ardythe Morrow, a consortium member and an associate professor at the center, is confident will work.
After all, she says, this is about children.
``That's where people tend to put their best foot forward,'' she said. ``And we are offering as a gift to the community this report, and saying, `everyone can work on these things.' ''
The seeds for Monday's report were planted more than three years ago when the center received a $96,000 grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve immunization rates for Norfolk's 2-year-olds.
At the time, only 47 percent of the city's children under age 2 were fully immunized; the state average was 54 percent and the national rate 70 percent. Since then, thanks in part to the consortium's efforts, like providing immunizations in neighborhood schools, Norfolk's rate has jumped to 60 percent.
Fran Butterfoss, one of the grant's researchers, said that during the first meeting, consortium members told her that immunization rates weren't the area's biggest health problem.
If we succeed, she promised them, ``we'll go back and look at the other child health issues that affect this region.''
Last February, her wish came true. The consortium formed a committee to identify other children's health issues.
The committee represented a broad cross-section of people who deal with children: school nurses, public health directors, military doctors, pediatricians, social workers and community agency representatives.
They had one mission: Find information about children's health issues. They went to state and local health departments, school systems, hospital discharge databases, federal agencies, even the state police, to pull together numbers on more than 65 different areas that affect children's health.
They met monthly over bag lunches to define the region, decide how the data would be presented and clarify the most important issues.
They were not to editorialize about the data or shape it according to their opinions, said committee chairwoman Sarah Bishop. They would simply present it, and let the community tell them where to focus next.
That approach has a record of success, says one expert in community coalition building.
``People in the community have a better perspective on the problems and barriers they face and the opportunities for solutions,'' said Henrie Preadwell, program director for the Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The foundation supports community-based programs devoted to improving maternal and child health.
``You can't address a health problem if you don't have everyone contributing from their perspective,'' he said.
That's why having community representatives collect the data - instead of just relying on professionals - was so important, said Bishop.``It gives you buy-in at the grass-roots level,'' which is where the solutions will come from, she said.
Pickering hopes the message from Monday's meeting gets through.
``By presenting this data to the population of our area, perhaps the realization that we need to put more time, effort and resources into our children will be realized,'' he said.
Coming Monday: The first in an occasional series examining solutions for each of the region's 10 worst health problems for children. Monday's story focuses on asthma, the country's most serious chronic disease in children. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Many of the top 10 children's health problems in the region are
intertwined. ``They are the medical outcomes of social problems,''
said Dr. Edward Karotkin, a specialist Children's Hospital of The
King's Daughters in Norfolk.
Graphic
Chart by VP
Our Children's Health
Issue
What the numbers say
National goal by year 2000
What the experts say
Solutions
For complete copy, see microfilm
Side Bar
Quiz:
1. What is the number one reason for admission to Children's
Hospital of The King's Daughters?
a. child abuse
b. asthma
c. accidents
2. What South Hampton Roads city has the highest rate of children
hospitalized each year because of unintentional injuries?
a. Suffolk
b. Portsmouth
c. Chesapeake
3. What percent of women in Norfolk breastfeed their newborns?
a. 60 percent
b. 10 percent
c. 36 percent
4. What percent of the region's 2-year-olds is fully immunized?
a. 30 percent
b. 60 percent
c. 75 percent
5. The state's teen pregnancy rate (per 1,000 females aged 10 to
19) is 39. The region's teen pregnancy rate is:
a. 37
b. 50
c. 65
6. Hampton Roads has a higher number of HIV and AIDS cases in
children than any other region in the state.
a. True
b. False
7. Approximately one out of every ----- babies born in Hampton
Roads are born to women who did not receive early prenatal care.
a. 7
b. 4
c. 3
Answers: 1(b); 2(b - 43.8 cases per 10,000 children); 3(c); 4(b);
5(b); 6(a); 7(b - 22.3 percent of all births)
KEYWORDS: STUDY REPORT CHILDREN HEALTH