Sports medicine for kids expands in west Houston

February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Availability of the specialized medicine children sometimes need continues to grow in west Houston. Texas Children’s recently added sports medicine department to its West Campus hospital near Katy, just off I-10 at Barker Cypress.

Their sports medicine program team doctors and physical therapists trained to care for child and adolescent sports conditions and athletic injuries. We asked and the injuries they most often see are:

  • Ankle injuries
  • Concussions
  • Overuse muscle pain
  • Back pain
  • Exercise-induced asthma
  • Shoulder injuries
  • Elbow and wrist injuries

Their sports medicine team also includes orthopedic sports physicians who set broken bones, dislocations, ligament injuries, ACL and PCL injuries and meniscal tears.

The team will also train student athletes on general wellness and injury prevention and the common conditions that affect performance, such as overtraining, under-nutrition, inadequate sleep, iron-deficiency anemia and poorly controlled asthma. Visit westcampus.texaschildrens.org for more information.

Photo by Hy-Vee

Filed Under: exercise, teens, Texas Children's, tweens

Good Deed Contest recognizes good Houston youth

February 20, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Houston area kids 18 and younger are encouraged to enter the Good Deed Contest, sponsored by Dr. Behzad Nazari, dentist. Dr. Nazari launched this contest to reward young people for their positive contributions to our community. Deeds large and small will be recognized.

All your child has to do is perform a good deed, then write a short essay about what they did. Dr. Nazari will give a new iPad to the child or teen with the best essay.

“We all have a vested interest in providing a stable foundation of moral values to our youngsters,” Dr. Naziri told The Leader. “We believe that children deserve a helping hand to make their own choice of what is right or wrong, to make their own choice of how to reach their goals without compromising their morals.”

Enter the Good Deeds Contest by April 30.

Dr. Nazari practices at the Antoine Dental Center.

Thank you to The Leader for telling us about this contest!

Filed Under: giveaway, teens, teeth, tweens

Ft. Bend schools work to prevent drug abuse

February 6, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Fort Bend Independent School District and the Fort Bend Regional Council on Substance Abuse, Inc. recently formed the Fort Bend Community Prevention Coalition. The coalition will work to prevent drug and alcohol abuse in Ft. Bend youth.

According to the council:

Studies show that by the time our children reach the age of 12, they may already be destined for a life of drug and alcohol abuse including the social hardships and criminal activity such a life usually entails.

The council sends out specially trained counselors to coach kids to make good choices when faced with offers of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. They do this through school activities, summer camps and events such as puppet shows. The group also offers counseling for children and adults, drug testing and outpatient drug treatment programs.

You can learn more about the council and its classes and events here.

Filed Under: mental health, teens, tweens

93% of Houston parents support sex ed in schools, study says

October 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Here’s a happy shocker that landed in my email this week.

A recent survey of Houston area parents found that 93% support the implementation of school-based sexual health education programs. The research was conducted by Dr. Susan Tortolero of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Prevention Research Center.

“Of this group of parents in support of school-based sex education, 66% supported abstinence-plus teaching, which includes accurate information on condoms and contraception,” said Susan Tortolero, Ph.D., director of the UTHealth Prevention Research Center.

The 1,200 parents polled were a diverse group: 41% white, 33% Hispanic, 18% African American, and 8% Asian and other ethnicities. Parents also were diverse in their political and religious affiliation. All had at least one child enrolled in a Harris County public or private school, grades K-12.

“Given that students are becoming sexually active at early ages and that Texas has one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation, understanding parents’ attitudes toward sexual health education is valuable in finding effective ways to lower these high statistics,” said Tortolero, who is also an associate professor of behavioral science, health promotion and epidemiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health, a part of UTHealth.

The parents were surveyed to assess their views on sex education programming in schools. They were asked questions such as the type of sex education they believe students should receive and when this education should begin.

The survey found 64% of parents believe medically accurate information should be taught beginning in middle school or earlier. Tortolero says providing sexual education to middle school students has been shown to delay sexual initiation.

When asked to select the top three groups of people who should decide on sexual health education in public schools, parents, health professionals and teachers were respectively selected as the top three.
The survey also found:

  • 80% of parents support some form of sex education in schools beginning in middle school and 13% believed sex education should begin in high school
  • 7% of parents indicated sex education should not be taught in school
  • Hispanic parents demonstrated the highest support of teaching sex education in middle school, followed by white, African American and Asian parents
  • 27% were in support of abstinence-only education
  • 75% of parents thought schools should be doing more to help prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
Here’s a video of Dr. Tortolero talking about the survey and the results mean for Harris County schools.

The findings were published in a series of articles that examine teen pregnancy, prevention and sexual-health education in Texas. The articles are published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Research on Children published by CHILDREN AT RISK.

The University of Texas Prevention Research Center was founded in 1986 as one of the first three centers in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Prevention Research Center Program. Its mission is to impact child and adolescent health through a collaboration of academic, public health and community partnerships engaged in scholarly, community-based prevention research, research translation and education.

Tell us: Do you think sex education should be taught in school? When should it begin? Are our politicians totally out of touch with what the majority of parents want? Or, have parents seen the results of abstinence only education and want a change?

Filed Under: sex, teens, tweens, UTHSC