(WASHINGTON) — Following months of hardships and devastating losses in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandra Lindsay, an intensive care nurse in New York, became a symbol of hope for people across the globe when she became the first person in the United States to receive a COVID-19 vaccine following emergency authorization from federal officials.
Seemingly overnight, Lindsay, who got the shot in December of 2020, became a prominent vaccine advocate, urging others to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and help curb the virus’s spread.
In light of her advocacy, Lindsay was one of seventeen recipients to be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden on Thursday.
“I’m honored to hold this place in history,” Lindsay told ABC News prior to the ceremony.
In the hours following her vaccination, the image of Lindsay receiving her shot circulated rapidly across the country, as millions celebrated it as a symbolic light at the end of the tunnel after the pandemic had forced families apart.
The Americans honored with the medal “demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith,” according to a press release from the White House “[and] have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities – and across the world – while blazing trails for generations to come.”
“Sandra, as I told you before, if there’s any angels in heaven, they’re all nurses,” Biden said during the ceremony.
A citation read prior to the presentation of Lindsay’s award noted that at the height of the pandemic, she directed a team of nurses as they worked “tirelessly to save patients while risking their own lives.” When the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized, Lindsay was a “ray of light and our nation’s dark power.”
“She represents the best of America,” the citation said.
Lindsay was honored alongside other Presidential Medal of Honor recipients, including former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father and founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center, and actor Denzel Washington.
Last month, Lindsay initially missed the call from the White House informing her of the award, believing it was a prank call. When she learned that the honor was real, Lindsay said she was “overwhelmed” with emotions.
“I was just overwhelmed with pride, joy, gratitude and just immediately thought about what that meant for others, for people who look like me — for young ladies, for black women, for immigrants, for Jamaicans, for Americans, nurses, health care workers, minorities,” Lindsay said.
Lindsay, who works as the director of patient care services in critical care at Northwell Health, said was met with an incredibly positive public reaction following her vaccine, with some people telling her they were inspired to get the shot because of her.
For Lindsay, who was raised in Jamaica by her grandparents and moved to the United States in 1986, the honor is beyond anything she could have imagined.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be in this position. But I said yes. I said yes not knowing what I was getting into, but knowing that it was the right thing to do, and here I am today, so anything is possible,” Lindsay said.
With 70 million eligible Americans still unvaccinated, Lindsay stressed that her advocacy work is not done.
“We have made significant strides, but [COVID-19] is still here, and it still poses a threat to you, if you are not protected. I encourage everyone to go get themselves vaccinated,” Lindsay said. “If you’re not vaccinated, you’re still not protected.”
(WASHINGTON) — Following months of hardships and devastating losses in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandra Lindsay, an intensive care nurse in New York, became a symbol of hope for people across the globe when she became the first person in the United States to receive a COVID-19 vaccine following emergency authorization from federal officials.
Seemingly overnight, Lindsay, who got the shot in December of 2020, became a prominent vaccine advocate, urging others to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and help curb the virus’s spread.
In light of her advocacy, Lindsay will be one of seventeen recipients to be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.
“I’m honored to hold this place in history,” Lindsay told ABC News prior to the ceremony.
In the hours following her vaccination, the image of Lindsay receiving her shot circulated rapidly across the country, as millions celebrated it as a symbolic light at the end of the tunnel after the pandemic had forced families apart.
The Americans honored with the medal “demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith,” according to a press release from the White House “[and] have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities – and across the world – while blazing trails for generations to come.”
Lindsay will be honored alongside other Presidential Medal of Honor recipients, including former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father and founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center, and actor Denzel Washington.
Last month, Lindsay initially missed the call from the White House informing her of the award, initially believing it was a prank call. When she learned that the honor was real, Lindsay said she was “overwhelmed” with emotions.
“I was just overwhelmed with pride, joy, gratitude and just immediately thought about what that meant for others, for people who look like me — for young ladies, for black women, for immigrants, for Jamaicans, for Americans, nurses, health care workers, minorities,” Lindsay said.
Lindsay, who works as the director of patient care services in critical care at Northwell Health, said was met with an incredibly positive public reaction following her vaccine, with some people telling her they were inspired to get the shot because of her.
For Lindsay, who was raised in Jamaica by her grandparents and moved to the United States in 1986, the honor is beyond anything she could have imagined.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be in this position. But I said yes. I said yes not knowing what I was getting into, but knowing that it was the right thing to do, and here I am today, so anything is possible,” Lindsay said.
With 70 million eligible Americans still unvaccinated, Lindsay stressed that her advocacy work is not done.
“We have made significant strides, but [COVID-19] is still here, and it still poses a threat to you, if you are not protected. I encourage everyone to go get themselves vaccinated,” Lindsay said. “If you’re not vaccinated, you’re still not protected.”
(BALTIMORE) — As federal officials move to address growing concerns over an outbreak of monkeypox in the U.S., an increasing number of positive cases are emerging across the country.
Last week, Brian Thomas, 32, of Baltimore became the latest American to test positive for monkeypox — a diagnosis he has been sharing openly on social media, in the hope of curbing the spread by raising awareness about the disease.
“I probably first started hearing about monkeypox a month or two ago and I really kind of wrote it off,” Thomas told ABC News. “You’re always watching it happen to other people and you’re like, ‘oh, but probably not going to happen to me, probably not going to happen a lot in the States.'”
Thomas, who had just recently traveled to Florida on a trip, said he initially thought he had contracted COVID-19, after he began to experience similar respiratory symptoms, often associated with the virus, such as fatigue and body aches. However, both of the COVID-19 tests he took came back negative.
After two suspicious lesions emerged on Thomas’ body, he realized that his symptoms were potentially connected to monkeypox. He “immediately” contacted his health care provider, he said.
After getting tested for monkeypox, Thomas’ test came back positive. Although Thomas, a travel nurse, said he was expecting to have monkeypox, his diagnosis was still “shocking.”
“I know that I’m going to be fine. But what do I do now? And who have I put it at risk? I live with two other people. And that really was what was going through my mind,” Thomas said. “I felt like I’m a danger to the public and that’s never a great feeling to have.”
Now, more than a week since his diagnosis, Thomas said he is feeling better, though he is still waiting for his lesions to fully scab over and heal, which he describes as a bit itchy and painful. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that isolation precautions be continued until “all lesions have resolved, the scabs have fallen off, and a fresh layer of intact skin has formed.”
Thomas told ABC News that he feels it his duty to educate his followers on social media about monkeypox, particularly given the suggestion by some, that the virus only targets people of certain sexual orientations. Health experts stress that although a large proportion of those who are currently testing positive for monkeypox are gay and bisexual men, ultimately, anyone can contract the monkeypox, regardless of sexual orientation.
“There is a lot of stigma about monkey pox right now. The fact of the matter is, is that it is most prevalent in the gay community right now, and that has led people to believe and lead people to remark that this is a gay disease. And when something is marked as a gay disease that automatically puts stigma on it,” Thomas said. “Even though this community is the one that’s most effected now, it’s not going to stay like that forever, if the numbers increase.”
Prior to his monkeypox diagnosis, Thomas has used his social media platform to share his story as an openly HIV positive healthcare worker. Thus, Thomas said the transition to also discuss his monkeypox diagnosis online felt natural.
Although monkeypox vaccines were provided to both his roommates, Thomas stressed that he strongly believes that in order to control the outbreak, vaccines need to be made available to all high-risk people.
“If we could get the population that’s most affected right now vaccinated, we could really stop this in the track in its tracks,” Thomas said. ” I think that’s the only way that we’re going to get ahead of this before it becomes a real problem in the States.”
The federal government is currently working to ramp up its production of monkeypox vaccines, in order to make them available to different states and jurisdictions. The Department of Health and Human Services said last week that the agency will send out nearly 300,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine for prevention of the disease for people who have been exposed.
As of July 1, HHS has shipped nearly 20,000 doses of JYNNEOS to 15 U.S. jurisdictions.
Since the start of the outbreak, there have been 559 confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S. according to Global.health.
(WASHINGTON) — Popular e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs, Inc. has been left in limbo after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is temporarily pausing a ban on the company’s products.
The federal health agency announced Tuesday on Twitter that it was issuing an administrative stay because “there are scientific issues unique to the Juul application that warrant additional review.”
This means the ban of Juul’s products is temporarily suspended, not rescinded.
The order was initially issued on June 23 but was blocked one day later by a federal appeals court. The FDA’s stay will continue throughout the appeals process.
For Juul to keep its e-cigarettes and other products on store shelves, the manufacturer must show that its products benefit adult smokers — meaning helping them quit or reduce their use of traditional cigarettes — and are unlikely to have underage users addicted.
At the time the ban was issued, the FDA said Juul had provided the federal agency with insufficient and conflicting data about any potential health risks or that Juul products benefited public health.
Juul has previously stated it believes it submitted enough information to “address all issues raised by the agency.”
It’s unclear if Juul will be able — or be required — to submit any further data while the FDA conducts the additional review.
“With this administrative stay from the FDA now in place, we continue to offer our products to adult smokers while we pursue the Agency’s internal review process,” Joe Murillo, chief regulatory officer at Juul Labs, said in a statement to ABC News. “We remain confident in the quality and substance of our applications and believe that ultimately we will be able to demonstrate that our products do in fact meet the statutory standard of being appropriate for the protection of the public health.”
The statement continued, “We now look forward to re-engaging with the FDA on a science- and evidence-based process to pursue a marketing authorization for Juul products.”
Politicians and anti-tobacco advocates have accused the company of using flavors such as creme, mint and menthol — along with a sleek design resembling a USB flash drive — to market vaping to U.S. children and teenagers.
More than 2 million American middle and high school students used e-cigarettes in 2021 — with eight in 10 students saying they use flavored e-cigarettes, according to the FDA.
The 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey found Juul was the most popular e-cigarette brand used by adolescents with 25.4% of high school e-cigarette users and 35.1% of middle school users saying Juul was their most used brand.
Nicotine exposure from e-cigarettes can hinder brain development in adolescents and young adults, which can continue into the mid-20s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just one Juul pod contains as much nicotine as a pack of 20 traditional cigarettes, the manufacturer has said.
The CDC also says e-cigarettes can contain heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals that can damage the lungs.
In 2009, Congress gave the FDA authority to regulate the manufacturing, distribution and marketing of tobacco products.
E-cigarette manufacturers, including Juul, were required to submit their products to the FDA to review by September 2020 but were able to sell products while the FDA review was under way.
(NEW YORK) — Amber Smith, the wife of country music star Granger Smith, is opening up about grief, living with loss and water safety three years after her son River died following a drowning accident.
In 2019, the Smith family were outside their home when River, who was 3 at the time, slipped through their home pool gate and went into the water. Even though he was pulled out of the pool shortly afterward, River had been deprived of oxygen for too long and later died.
Smith said in the years since, grief has been a “messy” yet “hopeful” journey for both her and her family.
“It’s looked like anger and severe sadness and frustration and confusion but it’s also looked like growing through it and seeing joy in my other children and seeing them thrive in school and bringing awareness to drowning prevention,” the mom of four told co-hosts Hayley Hubbard and Jessica Diamond on the Meaning Full Living podcast.
Even though their shared and individual grieving processes have been complicated and difficult experiences, Smith said she hasn’t shied away from speaking up about it and wants others who’ve lost children to know that they’re not alone and that grief doesn’t have to look any specific way.
“So many times, it was not pretty … sobbing tears, screaming in my car, punching my steering wheel, sitting by his bed, holding his blanket, crying until nothing else came out. That’s where I was and that’s what’s real and I think people don’t talk about that,” said Smith, who has continued to share snippets of her family life on social media since River’s death.
“I was just trying to show the realness of pain and grief and it’s not easy and it’s OK to feel those emotions … but you just can’t stay there, you can’t stay stuck in that place,” she added.
It’s a message Smith has been conscious about teaching her older children as well. Lincoln, now 8, and London, 10, both witnessed their younger brother’s accident.
“We had to be very honest from the very beginning,” Smith said. “The nurses said you have to be very honest. Kids are resilient and they’re going to know if you’re sugarcoating things so we just went home with that intention of being very honest … We said, ‘River was without oxygen for too long. They did everything that they could but Bubbie died.'”
Smith said she and her husband decided to put their children in play therapy to help them cope with their grief but they also made an effort to keep River’s memory alive, talking about him together as a family, keeping pictures of him displayed at home and not hiding their own grieving from their children.
“We just let them process their emotions and we have continually told them that whatever they’re feeling … it’s OK,” she said.
After River’s death, the Smith family welcomed another child, a son named Maverick. Smith said she knew early on that she wanted to make sure Maverick got formal water safety lessons.
One way Smith has been able to turn her family’s tragedy into meaningful purpose is to advocate for water safety, and she’s been spreading the word through her social media platforms.
Water safety tips
Smith shared multiple safe swimming tips on Instagram, many of which echo the advice of water safety organizations like the ZAC Foundation, which was founded in 2008 by Karen and Brian Cohn, whose son Zachary also died in a drowning accident in 2007.
Below are some water safety tips parents should know, from the ZAC Foundation:
Keep your eyes on your kids. If your child doesn’t know how to swim, be sure they’re at arm’s length any time they are in or around water.
Enroll children in swimming lessons.
Ensure there is four-sided fencing around backyard pools with self-closing, self-latching gates.
Be sure there are alarms on doors and windows leading out to the pool area.
Become your kids’ first line of defense and learn how to perform CPR.
Remove pool toys when not in use as children can be attracted to them.
Empty the water from inflatable pools and buckets when not in use.
Wear and have your children wear Coast Guard-approved life jackets in the water.
If kids are wearing life jackets and or “puddle jumpers” in the water, talk to them first about what it feels like to be in the water without a life jacket on.
Talk to children to make sure they don’t play in water areas without adult supervision. Make sure kids never go into the water without permission. Only swim where there are lifeguards supervising.
Check flag warnings for water conditions and avoid getting into the water if conditions are unsafe.
Create a water safety plan for you and your family, just like you would for a fire safety plan.
Keep a phone nearby in case someone needs to call 911.
Quintin Lamarr told ABC News that he struggled with bullying as a Black, gay teen growing up in Milwaukee. – Leslie Andrews
(NEW YORK) — Quintin Lamarr first began having thoughts of suicide when he was around 16 years old.
Now 26 and an advocate and volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Lamarr told ABC News that about a year and a half of those suicidal thoughts culminated in a mental health crisis that led to his hospitalization. During that time, he said, he was dealing with continued grief over the death of his father along with more recent bullying he faced as a gay Black teenager growing up in Milwaukee.
He didn’t find the support he needed at school, he said, and as the only child of a single mother who was busy trying to provide for the household he ended up spending a lot of time alone.
“I just felt like I had no community. I had no love. I had no protective energy around me,” Lamarr said. “It just felt like ‘nobody wants me here.'”
His experience is shared, at least in part, by many other young Black people.
The suicide rate among Black youth has been increasing along with the number of suicide attempts and the severity of those attempts, according to the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in 2019.
That report, tracking suicide trends among students ages 14-18 over the previous 10 years, found that of the 8.9% who reported attempting suicide, Black youth were among the populations with the highest rates of reporting attempts, accounting for 11.8%. By contrast, white youth accounted for 7.9% of those reported attempts and Hispanic youth accounted for 8.9%.
The study found there was an even greater difference in reported attempts by race among female students: Black female students accounted for 15.2% of those reporting attempts, white female students made up 9.4% of that population, and Hispanic female students accounted for 11.9%.
A separate report from the American Academy of Pediatrics tracking suicidal behavior in youth from 1991 to 2017 found that Black youth experienced significant increases in suicide attempts over that period. And among Black kids ages 5-12, the suicide rate was found to be twice that of their white counterparts in 2017.
“What we’ve been seeing over time, and it’s been over a long period of time, is a significant increase in the number of Black boys dying by suicide,” said Dr. Tami D. Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Experts told ABC News the disproportionately rising rate has a variety of underlying causes, including lack of access to mental health care, lack of awareness around symptoms of mental illness, social stigma and medical and structural racism.
More broadly, experts said, Black children and teenagers deal with some of the same mental health stressors as other young people — including anxiety and depression — and see some of the same challenges in getting caregivers to recognize what is really going on.
“A lot of people are just now learning that the unfortunate reality for a lot of Black youth is that they are dying,” said Dr. Christine Crawford, associate medical director for NAMI. “And a lot of that has to do with the fact that mental health conditions are often underdiagnosed or are not adequately treated for the conditions that they have.”
Dr. Jeffery Greene, an adolescent medicine specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, said that while lack of access to care is a contributor, the growing Black youth suicide rate is “multifactorial.”
“Of course, just the stigma of being labeled as someone with depression or anxiety limits the ability to get patients in to see their provider,” Greene said. “The racial injustices in this country over the last few years becoming so overt has also contributed. And, honestly, my personal feeling is in talking to teenagers, it seems like there’s a feeling of lack of hope for the future.”
Racism plays a role
Crawford said the utilization of mental health services among Black youth is lower than among other groups. There are several reasons for this, Crawford said, including “clinician bias and racism,” which can get in the way of diagnosis and become a barrier to treatment.
Structural and systemic racism also play a role, Crawford explained, as Black youth are more likely to attend schools and live in communities that are under-resourced and unable to provide mental health support.
“We need to acknowledge the fact that racism does lead to some of this and contributes to some of the bias. But that’s a hard thing to talk about — a hard thing for people to accept,” Crawford said. “But once people acknowledge the fact that it has an impact on what it is we’re seeing in mental health with children, especially Black children, that’s the only way that we’re able to strive for change.”
“We have to recognize the problem in order to adequately solve it and address it,” she said.
Racism in daily life also presents complications, with a study from the CDC released earlier this year showing that reports of experiencing racism were higher among students with poor mental health.
“We do know that the trauma that is experienced by racism can certainly result in mental health symptoms,” Crawford said. “We do see that people who have experienced various forms of racism, such as microaggressions, such as discrimination, are more likely to experience pretty significant psychological distress.”
Lamarr, the advocate, said that the bullying he faced as a boy — not just for his race but his sexuality — contributed to his own struggles.
“I’ve always had insecurities about things, just because growing up — being dark-skinned, being flamboyant, living in my truth, being part of the LGBT community, you always are criticized,” Lamarr said. “There was always a sense that I was holding back or I wasn’t always fully myself.”
Importance of historical context
In addition to social factors influencing mental health struggles for Black youth, Crawford said, it is possible that their symptoms are dismissed by health care providers.
“There’s often a tendency, especially for some white clinicians, to automatically assume that a child is presenting a certain way because they’re Black and because they’ve experienced a lot of trauma. But all of that can be true and they can also be experiencing symptoms of depression,” Crawford said. “We need to make sure that we’re taking both things into account — some of the external environmental societal factors that may be exacerbating mood symptoms — and we also need to know that there are treatments that exist to provide support for depression.”
Crawford cites a history in psychiatry of dismissing Black people’s mental illness symptoms.
“We do know that depression was a condition that was not diagnosed in Black people because the field didn’t think that Black people’s minds were sophisticated enough to experience an abstract condition such as depression,” she said.
It’s important, Crawford said, “to appreciate this historical context and how we’re continuing to see the ramifications of all of that in the present day.”
Depression can look different in kids
Age as well as race is a factor in mental health — indeed, the two can intersect. Symptoms of depression can present differently in children, including Black youth, than they do in adults.
Benton, the president-elect of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, explained that most frequently Black children are diagnosed with “externalizing disorders,” which are characterized by “acting-out behavior.”
“The assumption is not that Black youth can be depressed or suicidal. It’s that they tend to act out more than acting on themselves,” Benton said. “And that’s just not true.”
Sometimes depression in children is not recognized by parents because of differing presentation, Crawford explained, and there can be a misconception that depression stems solely from external problems and stressors.
“I try to remind my families, my caregivers, that depression — major depressive disorder — is a medical condition,” Crawford said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be because something bad happened to you, and therefore you are depressed and therefore you are very sad and crying in the corner.”
She said for some people, and especially kids, they feel depressed because “it’s a biological condition.”
Crawford said that depression for this group may look more like irritability than sadness. Children with depression may also demonstrate quick mood fluctuation. Refusal to attend school, lack of interest in typical activities and excessive sleeping are other warning signs.
“These are symptoms of depression that can look different in kids [and] that are often misinterpreted as being something else by their caregiver,” Crawford said.
The pandemic effect
Since 2020, as America’s children have been feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social isolation and disruptions, mental health has been even more of a concern for health care providers and experts.
“I’m seeing that the symptom presentation [of anxiety and depression] is certainly more severe. I’m seeing that there’s a 31% increase in emergency room visits for our youth,” Crawford said. “And that often is reflective of the fact that these kids are presenting in a state of crisis, and having thoughts of suicide is certainly a mental health-related emergency.”
As for access to care, Crawford said, “We’re all booked. The waitlist to see a psychiatrist is incredibly long. The same thing is true for our therapists or social workers.”
She said the growing demand for services has been encouraging because more people are reaching out for care. “But it’s also quite concerning, because there’s certainly not enough of us to meet this growing demand. There’s only 8,300 child psychiatrists in the entire country. And that’s not enough to meet this demand that has been just kind of amplified by the pandemic.”
Decreasing the stigma — and recognizing warning signs
Greene, the Seattle Children’s doctor, said he hopes efforts to decrease the stigma around mental health will enable more young people to access care and receive a diagnosis, if one needs to be made. An increase in identification of mental illness would also help, he says.
Lamarr’s own struggles as a teen resulted in his mom calling the police and having him admitted to a hospital.
Such a crisis can be any situation where a person’s behavior may cause them to harm themselves or others, according to NAMI. It may also present as someone being unable to care for themselves.
Warning signs can include the inability to perform daily tasks (like bathing or brushing teeth) as well as mood swings, isolation and abusive behavior to oneself and others, according to NAMI.
After Lamarr’s hospitalization, he told ABC News, things began turning around.
He spent three days in the hospital before starting outpatient treatment and an anger management class, and he eventually transferred to a new school program.
“I was 16 at the time and I remember thinking ‘I need to get out of here. I need to start over, start fresh, try again,'” he said.
Learning how to talk about his feelings during treatment was key, he said.
“It turns out sometimes all you need is just the outlet to let off steam or to just open up, or to just be honest or be candid or vent,” Lamarr said. “Sometimes when we have so much pent-up frustration or we have so much pent-up anger or we have so much grief or so much pent-up emotion, that we really don’t get to release. … We always are constantly trying to be strong — we break.”
“And that’s all it was for me to be honest,” he said. “It was just so much just pent up, so much going on, so much that I never really truly dealt with. I never knew how to deal with grief.”
Protective factors for Black youth
In addition to decreasing stigma and increasing access to care, Benton said there are protective factors for Black children that can help maintain mental health. Strong positive ethnic identity is one, she said.
There’s a lot of research to support that as a protective factor, Benton said, “If you’re Black, and you feel good about yourself, and you feel you identify your Blackness as a positive thing, it’s protective of all kinds of things.”
Other protective factors, she said, include support from families and communities, community engagement, strong school connectedness and focus on academics.
She also said that among Black youth, “church was a big factor. So people who were engaged in a church community and had that sense of connectedness tended to do better.”
Mental health as public health
In terms of creating better mental health outcomes among Black youth, Benton said it’s about prevention and many of the determinants of future challenges are social.
“The reality is poverty, violence, poor schools, the absence of adequate mental health resources for people who need it — all of those factors contribute to what we’re seeing with kids right now,” Benton said.
The impact on young children, she said, primarily among minority groups and those who are growing up economically disadvantaged, is “disproportionate.”
“It will not likely be the case that we will decide we’re going to redistribute everybody’s wealth and nobody’s going to be poor anymore,” Benton said. “I don’t think that’s the solution — though that could be helpful.”
The major issue, Benton said, is making sure kids have access to adequate nutrition, a place to sleep without fear, regular pediatric healthcare, social-emotional learning in schools and engagement with nature.
“We all know that those environmental factors actually change the way that people feel and the way they think, and it contributes to emotional health. So I think addressing many of those social factors is really the key,” Benton said. “And you don’t need to do that at a psychiatrist or psychologist’s office. You can do that at home, at the Y, on a sports team — the people that are most effective in prevention are people at schools and people in the community.”
“More of a public health approach is what we need around mental health,” she added.
As for Lamarr, “It’s been a journey to get to the point where I really feel like I deserve to be here,” he said. “I’m here for a reason. I have a story to tell. I’ve made it out of the darkness. And now I can be a help, really, to other people.”
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(NEW YORK) — As more infectious COVID-19 variants become dominant in the U.S., there are renewed signs that COVID-19 cases may be back on the rise across parts of the country.
The national resurgence comes as the number of children testing positive for the virus also sees an increase again.
New infections among children had been on the decline since May, however, for the first time in nearly two months, there has been an uptick in the weekly total of pediatric COVID-19 cases.
Last week, nearly 76,000 children tested positive for the virus, up from the 63,000 pediatric cases reported the week prior, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Overall, totals remain significantly lower than during other parts of the pandemic. However, the organizations said that child cases are still “far higher” than one year ago, when just 12,100 cases were reported.
Many Americans, who are taking at-home tests, are also not submitting their results, and thus, experts said daily case totals are likely significantly higher than the numbers that are officially reported.
Approximately 13.8 million children have tested positive for the virus, since the onset of the pandemic. Approximately 5.9 million reported cases have been added so far this year. Children represent about a fifth of all reported cases on record.
COVID-19 related hospitalizations among children are also on the rise, with admission levels also reaching their highest point since February, federal data shows.
Late last month, all children, six months and older, became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine — a welcome development in the fight against the pandemic that many parents had been eagerly awaiting.
Although it is still unknown how many children between the ages of six months and four years old have been vaccinated, data shows that the vaccine rollout in older children continues to lag.
Over 25 million children, over the age of five, who have been eligible for a shot since November, are still unvaccinated.
“It is critical that we protect our children and teens from the complications of severe COVID-19 disease,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement last month. “Vaccinating this age group can provide greater confidence to families that their children and adolescents participating in childcare, school, and other activities will have less risk for serious COVID-19 illness.”
Despite continued encouragement from scientists and federal health officials, overall, less than half of children ages 5 to 17 — about 44.4% that age group — have been fully vaccinated.
An even small proportion — 38.6% — of children over 5, who are eligible for a booster, have received their supplemental shot.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association noted in their report that there is an “urgent” need to collect more age-specific data to assess the severity of illness related to new variants as well as potential longer-term effects.
“It is important to recognize there are immediate effects of the pandemic on children’s health, but importantly we need to identify and address the long-lasting impacts on the physical, mental, and social well-being of this generation of children and youth,” the organizations said.
(ATLANTA) — A listeria outbreak that caused one death in Illinois and sickened at least 23 other people has been linked to a Florida ice cream brand, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC advises consumers to discard Big Olaf Creamery brand ice cream they have at home. It also recommends cleaning any containers, utensils and areas that may have touched a Big Olaf ice cream product.
The brand is only sold in Florida but the outbreak spread across 10 states.
The CDC is advising retailers to remove Big Olaf ice cream products from shelves and notes that the Sarasota-based company is “voluntarily contacting retail locations to recommend against selling their ice cream products until further notice.”
Listeriosis is an infection typically caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium “Listeria monocytogenes,” the CDC states on its site. When the bacteria spreads beyond the gut to other parts of the body, it can cause severe illness.
Symptoms can start as early as the same day or up to 70 days after eating the contaminated food.
The CDC says listeria typically affects pregnant women, newborns, older adults and people with weakened immune systems. It is rare for people in other groups to get the illness.
Symptoms vary based on the person and the part of the body affected – including fatigue, muscle aches, fever and more.
(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, leaving it up to individual states to decide whether to allow abortion procedures, has prompted abortion-rights advocates to urge women using period-trackers, and other digital apps that track reproductive health, to delete them.
“If you are using an online period tracker or tracking your cycles through your phone, get off it and delete your data. Now,” tweeted lawyer Elizabeth McLaughlin, founder of the female empowerment non-profit Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership.
McLaughlin’s message, which was posted on the day Politico reported the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Roe v. Wade in early May, has since been retweeted more than 59,000 times. The Supreme Court handed down its official decision on Roe v. Wade on June 24.
Abortion-rights advocates are ringing alarm bells not just about the use of menstruation-tracking apps, but the potentially incriminating digital trail of geo-location data, online transactions and web-search histories.
“It’s not just that we’re going back to a time before Roe v. Wade,” Leah Fowler, professor of health law and policy at the University of Houston, told ABC News’ “Start Here” podcast. “We’re doing it with the surveillance apparatus in place that we couldn’t have imagined even then,” she said.
Fears about criminal prosecution have grown among abortion-rights advocates as states with abortion bans institute penalties, which include possible fines and imprisonment, for abortion providers. For example, Arkansas has made performing or attempting to perform an abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. The only exception is if the mother’s life is in danger.
Kentucky and Louisiana have had courts issue temporary blocks on their bans, which had stated anybody who performs or attempts to perform an abortion will be charged and face prison terms and/or fines.
According to Fowler, no matter their privacy policy, companies could still be forced to hand over consumers’ data during the course of a criminal investigation.
And the data could also be at risk in civil litigation, Fowler said, through “discovery requests or other civil investigative demands,” that are not necessarily part of a criminal investigation.
“You don’t only have to be in a place that has made [abortion] a crime or considers it homicide to be subject to potential legally valid requests for information,” said Fowler.
These period-tracking apps have millions of users every month who utilize the technology to better understand and help control their reproductive health. The apps can tell you when to expect your next period, if you might be pregnant and how far along you are, when you are the most fertile for conceiving and what sorts of symptoms you usually experience.
In June, politicians released a statement asking President Joe Biden to “clarif[y] protections for sensitive health and location data” as part of a larger call to protect abortion rights.
This week, Axios reported that Biden plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers’ data privacy specifically in the context of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
Last year, the period-tracking app Flo settled a complaint with the FTC which alleged that the company was selling users’ health data to Facebook and Google, as well as marketing and analytics firms, allegedly in violation of their own privacy policy.
As part of the settlement, the app agreed to an “independent review of its privacy practices” and committed to “get app users’ consent before sharing their health information.”
In the settlement, Flo “neither admit[ted] nor denie[d] any of the allegations.”
On the day that Roe v. Wade was overturned, the company tweeted that it would soon be launching “Anonymous Mode,” which “removes your personal identity from your Flo account, so no one can identify you.”
A number of other period-tracking companies reacted to the decision.
The astrology-focused period-tracker app Stardust sent out a tweet two days after the Supreme Court decision that “we absolutely want to protect our users from bad actors, hackers and even our own government overreaching into our privacy.”
The company announced it had implemented an “encrypted wall” to protect users’ data and that it was “working on an option for users to completely opt out of providing any personal identifiable information.”
The app Clue, which is based in Europe and beholden to more stringent privacy laws, said in a statement that “no data point can be traced back to any individual person.”
In response to the question of how companies’ privacy policies could protect consumers’ data in the face of a warrant, Fowler said, “you can’t turn over what you don’t have.”
“There are limits on the types of things that law enforcement can do when they’re trying to get information from a company,” said Fowler. “That can inform how people might want to select period trackers.”
Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library/Getty Images/Stock
(NEW YORK) — One person in Illinois died after being infected with listeria, in a new outbreak that has infected a total of 23 people across 10 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The CDC said all but one of those infected were hospitalized.
Listeria is an illness that typically affects pregnant women, newborns, older adults and people with weakened immune systems, according to the CDC. It is rare for people in other groups to get the illness. Listeria is treated with antibiotics.
Symptoms vary based on the person and the part of the body affected. A rare version can cause fever and diarrhea.
Listeria outbreaks are typically traced back to one source, such as contaminated food products. The CDC said it is too soon to know the source of the outbreak, but said that most of the people who got sick lived in or traveled to Florida about a month before their illness. It is not clear if that is a coincidence, the CDC said.
For people who suffer a severe illness called invasive listeriosis, where the bacteria has spread beyond the gut, symptoms vary based on whether they are pregnant or not. Pregnant women usually experience fever and flu-like symptoms including fatigue and muscle aches. For others, symptoms include headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, convulsions, fever and muscle aches.
Symptoms of severe illness usually start within two weeks after eating food contaminated with listeria, but could also start as early as the same day or as late as 70 days after.
It is usually a mild illness for pregnant women, but it can cause severe illness in fetuses and newborn babies. Infections during pregnancy can lead to a miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery or life-threatening infection in the newborn.
Five pregnant women became sick during the recent outbreak, one of which resulted in the loss of the fetus.
People ages 65 and older and people with weakened immune systems could develop severe infections in the bloodstream, possibly causing sepsis, or in the brain. Other parts of the body could also be affected, including bones, joints and sites in the chest and abdomen.
The CDC said anyone suffering listeria symptoms should call their local health department and report the case.
