Children’s health

1,495 articles · Since 2011

Articles, page 2

Are antidepressant prescriptions for teens rising too fast?

October 2, 2026Oct 2, 2026

She is fifteen and has been taking sertraline for three weeks. Her mother asks if we can increase the dose, since the first dose didn't work quickly enough. I look at her medication list, which is already longer than mine…

She is fifteen and has been taking sertraline for three weeks. Her mother asks if we can increase the dose, since the first dose didn’t work quickly enough. I look at her medication list, which is already longer than mine was at twice her age. I find myself doing something I rarely do during a seven-minute visit: I pause.

I do not doubt the value of antidepressants. I have seen these …

Physician voices

Why do charity commercials leave clinicians uneasy?

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

September 28, 2026Sep 28, 2026

Every night on mainstream streaming platforms, I see the same rotation of charity commercials: protect dogs, save Syrian children, shelter American runaways, support childhood cancer care, preserve wildlife. Each one asks for a small monthly donation (99 cents, $5, $19),…

As a physician, I don’t respond to the emotional script. I respond to the ethical one. And the ethical script …

Health policy

Return or resign: the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act at work

Isabella Hower, MOT

September 26, 2026Sep 26, 2026

The first time I treated a newborn with the same congenital heart defect my unborn son was expected to have, I hesitated at the doorway. I couldn't stop picturing my own baby intubated and sedated, a fresh incision running the…

The first time I treated a newborn with the same congenital heart defect my unborn son was expected to have, I hesitated at the doorway. I couldn’t stop picturing my own baby intubated and sedated, a fresh incision running the length of his sternum.

I thought a terrifying fetal diagnosis would be the primary stressor of my pregnancy. I was wrong. The greatest obstacle wouldn’t come as a parent navigating her …

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Physician voices

The history of the medical home includes an Air Force base

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

September 26, 2026Sep 26, 2026

In the early 1990s, while the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was formalizing its vision of the "medical home," we were already living it, without a name. At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, our pediatric team operationalized what…

In the early 1990s, while the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was formalizing its vision of the “medical home,” we were already living it, without a name. At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, our pediatric team operationalized what would later be codified: interdisciplinary care, family partnership, coordinated services, and continuity across settings. We didn’t call it a medical home. It was excellent pediatric care, and we simply made …

Health policy

Medicaid managed care and the case for mutual stewardship

Steven Merahn, MD

September 23, 2026Sep 23, 2026

Roughly half of American children receive their health care through Medicaid or CHIP. These programs were legislated to cover them, and the choice has been made (repeatedly, across decades and both parties) not to fund them at the level their…

However, that choice, and the confines it creates, defines the real-world conditions …

Conditions and diseases

Pediatric euthanasia and the fear of a new eugenics

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

September 21, 2026Sep 21, 2026

Adapted from The New Eugenics in Medicine: Two Novellas About Power, Science, and the Future of Human Worth. The Netherlands' first reported termination of life in a child between ages 1 and 12 under its 2024 framework for regulating pediatric…

Adapted from The New Eugenics in Medicine: Two Novellas About Power, Science, and the Future of Human Worth.

The Netherlands’ first reported termination of life in a child between ages 1 and 12 under its 2024 framework for regulating pediatric euthanasia has become a global lightning rod for debate over the merits and sins of euthanasia.

A Dutch child was almost 2 years old and had been born at 26 …

Conditions and diseases

The Pennsylvania measles outbreak and the cost of forgetting

Christine King, CRNA

September 17, 2026Sep 17, 2026

On Saturday, August 29, 2026, a headline in my local paper caught my eye. There were 460 confirmed measles cases in Pennsylvania as of Friday, August 28, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. As of Wednesday, September 16, there are 731…

A brief search of the CDC website shows that since 1991, the number of measles cases nationwide has been in …

Physician voices

A military pediatrician inside the nuclear readiness system

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

September 14, 2026Sep 14, 2026

Every physician accumulates evaluations during a career. Most are read once and forgotten. Decades later, while reviewing my Air Force officer evaluation reports from Minot Air Force Base, I discovered something unexpected: a record not merely of performance, but of…

The reports documented emergency transports, developmental screening initiatives, community partnerships, staff expansion, and coordinated care systems. What struck …

Conditions and diseases

Why Florida school vaccine requirements may vanish in 2026

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

September 5, 2026Sep 5, 2026

Florida is evaluating a proposal to eliminate four long-standing school-required vaccines: hepatitis B, varicella, pneumococcal conjugate, and Hib. These are not fringe immunizations. They are foundational protections that keep children out of ICUs, prevent meningitis, stop congenital infections, and reduce…

The proposal affects 2.8 million students. It would remove any vaccine not explicitly mandated by statute and expand exemptions to include “moral and ethical” objections. The vaccines would remain …

Physician voices

The physician disposability nobody wants to name

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 30, 2026Aug 30, 2026

I am writing this from the slow, disciplined landscape of recovery (one repaired shoulder, one sling, and one unrepairable truth): Medicine did not suddenly become fragile when AI arrived. It did not suddenly become threatened when APRNs and NPs expanded…

Medicine became fragile when institutions discovered they could dispose of physicians and still call it progress.

I know this because …

Conditions and diseases

Family-centered care starts with the parent at 2 a.m.

Taylor Beery

August 29, 2026Aug 29, 2026

Somewhere tonight, a parent is managing a feeding tube and watching a monitor, deciding whether a small change in their child's breathing is the start of something serious. Families of children with special health care needs do this around the…

Somewhere tonight, a parent is managing a feeding tube and watching a monitor, deciding whether a small change in their child’s breathing is the start of something serious. Families of children with special health care needs do this around the clock. They run what amounts to an intensive care unit at home, handling medications and equipment that would test a trained nurse. They do it because they want their child …

Physician voices

Medicine disposed of physicians long before it feared AI

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 27, 2026Aug 27, 2026

Medicine became fragile when institutions discovered they could dispose of physicians and still call it progress.

I know this because …

Physician voices

How journal transfer without rejection avoids scrutiny

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 22, 2026Aug 22, 2026

Academic publishing has its own dialect, a language of polite evasions, soft landings, and decisions that say everything without saying anything at all. After decades in medicine, I thought I had seen every variation of editorial rejection. I was wrong. Recently, I submitted a manuscript describing a structured primary care model for autism diagnosis, a model that worked, was scalable, and addressed the capacity crisis that developmental-behavioral pediatrics has …

Conditions and diseases

The autism guideline that ignored its own evidence

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 12, 2026Aug 12, 2026

Professional organizations rarely contradict themselves in public. When they do, the contradiction is usually buried in procedural language, masked by committee structure, or softened by the slow drift of policy. But occasionally, the inconsistency becomes visible in plain sight, not because someone exposed it, but because two arms of the same organization published incompatible statements without noticing. That is what happened when the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reaffirmed its …

Health policy

Why pediatric practice succession models are changing

Paul Hain, MD

August 11, 2026Aug 11, 2026

The historical model of local pediatric practice was straightforward: A physician built a practice, cared for generations of families, and eventually passed ownership to younger physicians as retirement approached. That model sustained local pediatrics for decades. Today, however, the foundation that supported it has shifted. For many practices, the traditional path to succession is no longer viable, forcing physicians to consider new ways to preserve the practices they’ve spent their …

The Podcast by KevinMD

When good parenting looks different across cultures [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

August 7, 2026Aug 7, 2026

Listen on Spotify · Apple Podcasts

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Two families raise their kids in completely different ways. Both are doing it right. So why do clinicians so often assume one of them is doing something wrong? Najat Fadlalla, a developmental behavioral pediatric fellow, returns to unpack how cultural bias creeps into parent coaching, the first-line, evidence-based approach for children with or at risk of ADHD. This episode is …

Physician voices

What plain medical language gives families back

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

August 4, 2026Aug 4, 2026

Medicine is built on language. Not just terminology, but a shared vocabulary that allows us to describe the body with precision, to communicate risk without panic, and to translate complexity into clarity for families. Yet in recent years, medical language has drifted toward two extremes: jargon inflation on one side, oversimplification on the other. Both leave patients, and young clinicians, unmoored.

I was reminded of this recently while helping my son …

Medical education

Sex education is for parents, not just kids

Catherine Chen

July 30, 2026Jul 30, 2026

"It's not just the kids, it's the parents." My sex education came in two forms: an abstinence jingle in middle school, and a sock on a banana in high school. My parents offered a third option: silence. Decades later, not…

“It’s not just the kids, it’s the parents.”

My sex education came in two forms: an abstinence jingle in middle school, and a sock on a banana in high school. My parents offered a third option: silence. Decades later, not only are individuals’ reproductive rights being stripped away, but reproductive health education in any form is threatened by the federal government at all levels, from elementary schools to medical residencies.

If we …

Conditions and diseases

Vitamin K refusal is a systems failure, not a parental one

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 30, 2026Jul 30, 2026

I trained in the era when newborn care was a choreography, not a ritual, not a preference, but a sequence built from epidemiology, autopsy reports, and the memories of children we could not save. In the nursery, two injections and…

Vitamin K IM: To prevent catastrophic late-onset vitamin K deficiency bleeding (VKDB)
Hib vaccine: To eliminate epiglottitis and

…

Conditions and diseases

The slow collapse of developmental-behavioral pediatrics

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 28, 2026Jul 28, 2026

Developmental-behavioral pediatrics did not collapse overnight. It eroded the way institutions usually do: slowly, quietly, and then all at once. For those of us who practiced during its rise and decline, the story is not merely professional history. It is a record of what happens when a field built on dignity, patience, and longitudinal care is left without structural support.

For decades, developmental-behavioral pediatrics (DBP) served as a stabilizing force for …

Children’s health

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