At just over 1,200 square miles, Rhode Island is the smallest state. However, it presents big opportunities for studying child health. With just one medical school, one children’s hospital and one women’s hospital, Rhode Island is the perfect place for collaboration and innovation in children’s health.
A study by professors Eric Morrow and Stephen Sheinkopf, who lead our Autism Initiative, analyzing the first 1,000 patients from the Rhode Island Consortium for Autism Research and Treatment (RI-CART) found that girls receive autism diagnoses an average of 1.5 years later than boys, and people with autism often have co-occurring medical and psychiatric conditions. The study was published in the January 2020 issue of Autism Research.
The Rhode Island Community Food Bank has awarded The Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute their 2019 Guy Abelson Food Bank Leadership Award for their efforts on the 2019 Hunger Survey.
The Rhode Island Community Food Bank partnered with the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University on a statewide survey identifying demographic details of households impacted by hunger in Rhode Island.
An excerpt from the book, “Kid Number One: A story of heart, soul and business, featuring Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro,” looks at Hassenfeld's relationship with philanthropy and the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute.
People are suffering now, in Rhode Island as across the nation, according to Gregory Wellenius, director of the Brown University Center for Environmental Health and Technology, associate professor of epidemiology at Brown's School of Public Health, and a contributing author to the landmark Fourth National Climate Assessment, which warns that “human health and safety … in communities across the U.S. are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.”
In this helpful article by Huffpost, pediatricians from across the country provide guidelines for parents on what to ask other parents before their child's playdate.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association advocate for stricter restrictions on sugary drinks, including stiffer taxing and advertising restrictions, in an attempt to reduce the prevalence of obesity and other chronic diseases in children and young adults.
The Providence Business News reports that over a third of children in R.I are overweight or obese, as per a Rhode Island Kids count report released recently.
An NIH-funded study discusses how an inexpensive daily nutrition supplement made of dried skimmed milk, soybean and peanut extract, can improve the growth of a fetus, by providing essential vitamins and minerals to pregnant women in low resource settings. The supplement was distributed to women in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, India and Pakistan and findings indicated that those taking the supplement were less likely to have a stunted or small infant at birth.
