The good news for doctors this week: a new path to unimaginable wealth has opened up! The bad news: only one doctor can follow this path, and, as of Saturday, the option became unavailable to the rest of us after Dr. Priscilla Chang married Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s okay. I enjoy practicing pediatrics, and honestly, Zuckerberg isn’t my type. I’ve never really liked hoodies.
Thanks to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s revised policy on childhood blood lead levels, we may not have to wait so long for the next tech genius to marry. Last week the CDC lowered the official “blood lead level of concern” from 10 mcg/dL to a new value based on the 97.5th percentile of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, closer to 5 mcg/dL. Since the pediatric literature tells us any level of lead causes at least some incremental decrease in IQ, this means in only 16 short years the roads could be free of drivers who don’t know how to use a turn signal (you know who you are, blue Accord).
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Even a slight drop in blood lead levels could mean more young drivers will know what a turn signal is and how to use it.
At least that’s what the new guidelines might mean if the CDC had any money left in its budget to implement them. With the national lead prevention program facing funding reductions from $30 million down to $2 million this fiscal year, Congress appears to be ensuring that future generations will not be deprived of lousy drivers, gullible referees, and elected representatives.
Just when you think nothing can change for the better, along comes a state program that successfully addresses the childhood obesity epidemic. Go ahead and guess the state. Did you say New Hampshire? Vermont? California? Wrong! Try Mississippi. Having grown up just on the Tennessee side of the state line, I have an ingrained habit of ridiculing Mississippi, possibly the only state in the Union Tennesseans can legitimately make fun of.
But starting with former Governor Haley Barbour and continuing through current Governor Phil Bryant’s administration, the state, often ranked 50th on child and adult health measures, has implemented the Mississippi Healthy Students Act. State law now requires public schools to meet new physical activity and health instruction guidelines, and it mandated healthier offerings in school cafeterias. (There’s no “mystery meat” in Mississippi; it’s all pork. See, there I go again!) A study from the Center For Mississippi Health Policy demonstrates a significant drop in obesity rates from 2005 to 2011, and Mississippi ranks in the CDC’s top 10 states for limiting unhealthy school snacks. Fortunately for us Tennesseans, our state also borders my current home of North Carolina, where if we keep slashing budgets for child health, education, and nutrition we should easily be able to replace Mississippi as a punch line.
Does it seem to you we’re always drowning in something: debt, text messages, metaphors? Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the most common thing people drown in is water. In fact, according to a report last week from the CDC, drowning is now the second most common cause of death among US children aged 1 to 4, right behind birth defects, even though rates of drowning deaths have declined in the last decade. The CDC reminds parents to institute some simple safety measures. They should install fences around swimming pools, avoid drinking alcohol while supervising children, ensure boaters and weak swimmers use life-jackets, and hire lifeguards. Of course if you want to hire a lifeguard, it helps to first marry an Internet tycoon.