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  • Covenant School shooter was under care for emotional disorder and hid guns at home, police say | CNN

    Covenant School shooter was under care for emotional disorder and hid guns at home, police say | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    The 28-year-old who killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville was under care for an emotional disorder and had legally bought seven firearms that were hidden at home, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Tuesday.

    The parents of the shooter, Audrey Hale, spoke to police and said they knew Hale had bought and sold one weapon and believed that was the extent of it.

    “The parents felt (Hale) should not own weapons,” the chief said.

    On Monday morning, Hale left home with a red bag, and the parents asked what was inside but were dismissed, Drake said.

    Three of the weapons were used in the attack Monday. Police also said Tuesday they did not know a motive.

    The shooter targeted the school and church in the attack but did not specifically target any of the six people killed, police spokesman Don Aaron said. He also said Hale’s writings mentioned a mall near the school as another possible target.

    Live updates: Nashville Covenant School shooting

    The news conference came a day after Hale, a former student at the Covenant School, stormed into the elementary school and killed six people before being fatally shot by responding police officers.

    The attack was the 19th shooting at an American school or university in 2023 in which at least one person was wounded, according to a CNN tally, and the deadliest since the May attack in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead. There have been 42 K-12 school shootings since Uvalde.

    The victims included three 9-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, the daughter of lead church pastor Chad Scruggs. Also killed were Cynthia Peak, 61, believed to be a substitute teacher; Katherine Koonce, the 60-year-old head of the school; and Mike Hill, a 61-year-old custodian, police said.

    Earlier Tuesday, police released body-camera footage from the two officers who rushed into the Covenant School on Monday and fatally shot the mass shooter.

    The footage is from the body-worn cameras of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo, who police said fatally shot the attacker on Monday at 10:27 a.m. The videos show a group of five officers entered the school amid wailing fire alarms and immediately went into several rooms to look for the suspect.

    They heard gunfire on the second floor and so hustled up the stairs as the bangs grew louder, the video shows. The officers approached the sound of gunfire and Engelbert, armed with an assault-style rifle, rounded a corner and fired multiple times at a person near a large window, who dropped to the ground, the video shows.

    Collazo then pushed forward and appeared to shoot the person on the ground four times with a handgun, yelling “Stop moving!” The officers finally approached the person, moved a gun away and then radioed “Suspect down! Suspect down!”

    The video adds further insight into the timeline of the shooting and the police response. The first 911 call about the shooting came in at 10:13 a.m., and the shooter was killed 14 minutes later, according to police. The bodycam footage of Engelbert entering the school and shooting the attacker lasts about three to four minutes.

    The Covenant school is a private Christian school educating about 200 students from Pre-K through 6th grade. The school is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church, its website states.

    Nashville Mayor John Cooper told CNN the swift police response prevented further disaster.

    “It could have been worse without this great response,” the mayor of the police response. “This was very planned and numerous sites were investigated.”

    The police chief similarly praised the response as swift.

    “I was hoping this day would never ever come here in the city. But we will never wait to make entry and to go in and to stop a threat especially when it deals with our children,” Drake said in a Monday news conference.

    This undated picture provided by the Metro Nashville Police Department shows Audrey Elizabeth Hale.

    Police said the shooting was targeted, closely planned and outlined in documents from the shooter.

    Hale left writings pertaining to the shooting and had scouted a second possible attack location in Nashville, “but because of a threat assessment by the suspect – there’s too much security – decided not to,” Drake said on Monday.

    The shooter left behind “drawn out” maps of the school detailing “how this was all going to take place,” he added.

    The writings revealed the attack at the Christian school “was calculated and planned,” police said. The shooter was “someone that had multiple rounds of ammunition, prepared for confrontation with law enforcement, prepared to do more harm than was actually done,” Drake said.

    Three weapons – an AR-15, a Kel-Tec SUB 2000, and a handgun – were found at the school, he said. A search warrant executed at Hale’s home led to the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun and other evidence, according to police.

    “They found a lot of documents. This was clearly planned,” Mayor Cooper said. “There was a lot of ammunition. There were guns.”

    Police have referred to Hale as a “female shooter,” and at an evening news conference added Hale was transgender. Hale used male pronouns on a social media profile, a spokesperson told CNN when asked to clarify.

    Hale graduated from Nossi College of Art & Design in Nashville last year, the president of the school confirmed to CNN. Hale worked as a freelance graphic designer and a part-time grocery shopper, a LinkedIn profile says.

    nashville teammate lemon split

    Former teammate of Nashville school shooter got unusual Instagram messages before rampage

    Information from police and from the shooter’s childhood friend helped illuminate a timeline of the deadly attack.

    Just before 10 a.m. Monday, the shooter sent an ominous message to a childhood friend, the friend told CNN on Tuesday. In an Instagram message to Averianna Patton, a Nashville radio host, just before 10 a.m. Monday, the shooter said “I’m planning to die today” and that it would be on the news.

    “One day this will make more sense,” Hale wrote. “I’ve left more than enough evidence behind. But something bad is about to happen.”

    Patton told CNN’s Don Lemon she was the shooter’s childhood basketball teammate and “knew her well when we were kids” but hadn’t spoken in years and is unsure why she received the message. Disturbed by its content, she called a suicide prevention line and the Nashville Davidson County Sheriff’s Office at 10:13 a.m.

    At that very minute, police in Nashville also got a 911 call of an active shooter inside Covenant School and rushed there.

    The moment school shooter Audrey Hale arrived at the Covenant School was captured in 2 minutes of surveillance video released by Metro Nashville Police.

    Armed with three firearms, the shooter got into the school by firing through glass doors and climbing through to get inside, surveillance video released by Metro Nashville Police shows. Pointing an assault-style weapon, the shooter walked through the school’s hallways, the video shows.

    As the first five officers arrived, they heard gunfire from the second floor. The shooter was “firing through a window at arriving police cars,” police said in the news release.

    Police went upstairs, where two officers opened fire, killing the shooter at 10:27 a.m., police spokesperson Don Aaron said.

    After the shooter was dead, children were evacuated from the school and taken in buses to be reunited with their families. They held hands and walked in a line out of the school, where community members embraced, video showed.

    “This school prepared for this with active shooter training for a reason,” Nashville Metropolitan Councilman Russ Pulley told CNN. “We don’t like to think that this is ever going to happen to us. But experience has taught us that we need to be prepared because in this day and time it is the reality of where we are.”

    Patton, meanwhile, had “called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14 a.m. and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home,” she told CNN affiliate WTVF. An officer did not come to her home until about 3:30 p.m., she said.

    Students from the Covenant School hold hands Monday after getting off a bus to meet their parents at a reunification site after a mass shooting at the school in Nashville.

    Two Covenant School employees are among the victims of Monday’s mass shooting, according to the school.

    Katherine Koonce was identified as the head of the school, its website says. She attended Vanderbilt University and Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville and got her master’s degree from Georgia State University.

    Sissy Goff, one of Koonce’s friends, went to the reunification center after the shooting and suspected something was wrong when she didn’t see Koonce there.

    “Knowing her, she’s so kind and strong and such a voice of reason and just security for people that she would have been there in front handling everything, so I had a feeling,” Goff said.

    She said Koonce was a calming influence and even got a dog named “Covie” who greeted students before and after school.

    “Parents are so anxious, kids are so anxious, and Katherine had such a centering voice for people,” Goff said.

    Mike Hill was identified in the staff section of the Covenant Presbyterian Church’s website as facilities/kitchen staff. Hill, 61, was a custodian at the school, per police. A friend confirmed his image to CNN.

    Cynthia Peak, 61, was believed to be a substitute teacher, police said Monday.

    The family of Evelyn Dieckhaus, one of the 9-year-old victims, provided a statement to CNN affiliate KMOV.

    “Our hearts are completely broken. We cannot believe this has happened. Evelyn was a shining light in this world. We appreciate all the love and support but ask for space as we grieve,” the family said.

    The Covenant School issued a statement Monday night grieving the shooting.

    “Our community is heartbroken. We are grieving tremendous loss and are in shock coming out of the terror that shattered our school and church. We are focused on loving our students, our families, our faculty and staff and beginning the process of healing,” the school said in a statement.

    “Law enforcement is conducting its investigation, and while we understand there is a lot of interest and there will be a lot of discussion about and speculation surrounding what happened, we will continue to prioritize the well-being of our community.

    “We appreciate the outpouring of support we have received, and we are tremendously grateful to the first responders who acted quickly to protect our students, faculty and staff. We ask for privacy as our community grapples with this terrible tragedy – for our students, parents, faculty and staff,” the statement said.

    Cooper, the Nashville mayor, said he is “overwhelmed at the thought of the loss of these families, of the future lost by these children and their families.”

    “The leading cause of kids’ death now is guns and gunfire and that is unacceptable,” Cooper said.

    A recent study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in December backs that point, finding that homicide is a leading cause of death for children in the United States and the overall rate has increased an average of 4.3% each year for nearly a decade.

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  • Brazil has a new biggest favela, and not in Rio de Janeiro

    Brazil has a new biggest favela, and not in Rio de Janeiro

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    SOL NASCENTE, Brazil — The buzzing main avenue of this poor Brazilian neighborhood is filled with people popping off buses after work or grabbing a bite. Teens attend an open-air rap battle and gymnastics class. Hymns and prayers from tiny church services spill into the night.

    It’s an ordinary Wednesday in Brazil’s biggest favela, or low-income neighborhood. And for the first time since poverty, lack of opportunity and economic inequality caused favelas to mushroom across many of the nation’s cities, that superlative doesn’t belong to a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

    Sol Nascente (Rising Sun, in English) is just 21 miles (34 kilometers) from capital Brasilia in the Federal District, whose GDP per capita is by far higher than any Brazilian state, underscoring the inequality between affluent public servants’ neighborhoods and the district’s outskirts.

    The number of households in Sol Nascente has swelled 31% since 2010 to more than 32,000, surpassing Rio’s hillside Rocinha favela that had been Brazil’s most populous, according to preliminary data from the ongoing census. Rocinha has almost 31,000 households, the data show.

    Along Sol Nascente’s unpaved dirt roads of self-built homes and inside the main strip’s busy stores and restaurants, no one The Associated Press spoke welcomed the new ranking,

    “We still need lots of things, like basic sanitation and infrastructure, but people nowadays have better conditions. Some even have a car,” said street vendor Francisca Célia, 43.

    Célia added that, despite its challenges, Sol Nascente isn’t nearly as disorganized nor dangerous as the favelas she saw when visiting Rio three years ago. Plus, available plots of land are much bigger.

    “It’s a paradise here,” she said.

    The growth of Sol Nascente’s population reflects new arrivals searching for cheap or unoccupied land to build homes, whereas elsewhere in the Federal District poor people often pay relatively high rents. It also mirrors the surge of people living in working-class neighborhoods nationwide, driven by a generalized housing crisis caused by deep recession and higher rent prices, the effects of which were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Marcelo Neri, an economist and social researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university and think tank.

    The number of people living in areas the national statistics institute classifies as “subnormal agglomerates” jumped 40% to 16 million people since the 2010 census, according to the institute’s preliminary data, reviewed by the AP. Brazil’s population as a whole grew less than 9% in that period.

    Subnormal agglomerates include not just favelas, but also other terms used in Brazil to describe urban areas with irregular occupation and deficient public services. Residents of Sol Nascente acknowledge that it once was a favela, but told the AP that many areas of the community have outgrown that term.

    The statistics institute ceases to consider communities subnormal agglomerates once most residents gain legal title to their properties or all essential services are available, according to the institute’s geography coordinator, Cayo Franco.

    Favelas grow as settlers move onto unoccupied public and private land, whether on steep hillsides or flatland, like Sol Nascente.

    Sol Nascente still has poor public transport and unpaved, impassable roads, which flood frequently during the months of summer rains. Only some residents have obtained legal title, and services aren’t universally accessible.

    “I pay electricity, water, taxes, but there’s no sewage nor asphalt here in front,” said Débora Alencar, 39, who moved to Sol Nascente 15 years ago after finding the opportunity to buy land and build a house.

    “This is where I gained dignity,” she added.

    Alencar runs a collective that receives food, clothing and school materials for the needy. It also provides vocational training for manicurists and make-up artists, as well as dance and theater classes.

    She has also been a community representative since 2019, negotiating with the Federal District’s government for investments. She said she has secured some improvements, but not enough.

    A common characteristic among favelas is that the stigma lingers even after residents obtain titles and services, according to Theresa Williamson, executive director of non-profit Catalytic Communities, a Rio-based non-profit that studies favelas.

    That sentiment is familiar to Nayara Miguel, a housewife with two kids in a tidy area of Sol Nascente that now has electricity and water, and where the local government recently paved streets and installed public lighting. The federal government’s cities ministry has earmarked funds for a housing project there.

    “For me, this isn’t a favela; it’s a city,” said Miguel, 30. “Of course, it’s lacking a lot: I couldn’t get a spot in daycare for my daughter, so I can’t work; we can get to the hospital, but there’s no doctor there to attend to us.”

    Neighboring areas still feature shacks. Bruno Ferreira and his wife have been carving out a life in a destitute area of Sol Nascente for the last seven years. They found a place where, with their own hands, they could build a one-bedroom home to call their own and escape the rent trap.

    Ferreira, 39, works odd jobs and his wife has a formal, full-time job at a lunch counter. They are raising five children, with a sixth on the way, and saving to put in tile atop their home’s earthen floor.

    Neither desires to leave.

    “It’s very good here,” he said. “It’s just lacking infrastructure to be beautiful and legal.”

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  • Veto puts Kentucky in thick of fight over transgender rights

    Veto puts Kentucky in thick of fight over transgender rights

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill aimed at transgender health care puts the state in the middle of a national fight, but with more immediate consequences as the state’s looming election offers an early test on the state-by-state assault on gender-affirming care for minors.

    The veto issued Friday set off competing messages likely to be repeated until the November election — when Bluegrass State voters will decide whether to reward the Democratic governor with a second term or hand over the governor’s office to a Republican. No one seems to know yet how much weight voters will put on the transgender issue with the general election more than seven months away.

    The legislation in Kentucky is part of a widespread movement, with Republican state lawmakers in other states approving extensive measures that restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people this year, from bills targeting trans athletes and drag performers to measures limiting gender-affirming care.

    Beshear framed the Republican-backed bill in Kentucky as an example of government overreach into parental rights. The sweeping bill would ban gender-affirming care for minors — one of many provisions that would affect the lives of young transgender people.

    “At the end of the day, this is about my belief — and, I think, the belief of the majority of Kentuckians — that parents should get to make important medical decisions about their children, not big government,” Beshear told reporters soon after his veto.

    Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature passed the bill by lopsided margins. Lawmakers will reconvene Wednesday for the final two days of this year’s session, when they could vote to override the veto.

    Republicans took immediate aim at the governor’s veto, saying he veered too far for most Kentuckians. Republican Party of Kentucky spokesperson Sean Southard asked: “Is Andy Beshear the governor of Kentucky or California?” He predicted the governor will pay a political price for his action.

    “Once this campaign is over, today may very well be remembered as the day Andy Beshear lost his bid for reelection,” Southard said Friday.

    Republicans could try to capitalize on the political divide over transgender rights to motivate socially conservative voters to flock to the polls in November, when state constitutional offices are on the ballot. Several leading GOP contenders for governor were aligned in condemning Beshear’s veto.

    “If the Republicans choose to make this a centerpiece of the campaign against Beshear, it’s going to hurt him,” said Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based Republican political commentator.

    Beshear cited his own religious faith as a factor in rejecting the bill, saying: “I believe every single child is a child of God.”

    Twelve candidates in all are competing for the Republican nomination for governor in the state’s May primary. Beshear’s bid for a second term is drawing national attention to see if the popular incumbent can win again in the Republican-trending state. Beshear has won praise for his responses to devastating tornadoes and flooding, as well as a series of economic development successes.

    The bill’s opponents say they’ve got the public on their side and predict Beshear will benefit. They pointed to statewide polling released last month showing a majority of Kentuckians believe decisions over a transgender teen’s health care should be left with the parent, not determined by the state.

    “Folks who have never been involved with politics or legislation have been activated by the Kentucky General Assembly’s all-out war on LGBTQ kids,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Kentucky-based Fairness Campaign.

    Social conservatives in Kentucky were dealt a setback in last year’s general election when statewide voters rejected a ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion.

    The transgender health care bill sparked emotional responses from opponents as it was fast-tracked to legislative passage by GOP supermajorities in mid-March. It would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. It would outlaw gender reassignment surgery for anyone under 18, as well as the use of puberty blockers and hormones, and inpatient and outpatient gender-affirming hospital services.

    Doctors would have to set a timeline to “detransition” children already taking puberty blockers or undergoing hormone therapy. They could continue offering care as they taper a child’s treatments if removing them from the treatment immediately could harm the child.

    The bill’s supporters say they’re trying to protect children from undertaking gender-affirming treatments they might regret as adults. Research shows such regret is rare. Gender-affirming medical treatments have long been available in the U.S. and are endorsed by major medical associations.

    The bill would require school districts to devise bathroom policies that, “at a minimum,” would not allow transgender children to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identities. And it would allow teachers to refuse to refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use and would require schools to notify parents when lessons related to human sexuality are going to be taught.

    Debates over transgender rights garnered considerable attention throughout Kentucky’s legislative session, but in Pike County in eastern Kentucky, the issue has been a non-factor, said Pike County Judge-Executive Ray Jones II, a Democrat who supports Beshear.

    “It’s not even been an issue up here,” said Jones, a former state senator. “People are worried about inflation, they’re worried about the economy, they’re worried about jobs. Nobody’s called my office to discuss transgender issues.”

    Summing up the potential political fallout from the veto, Jones said: “People who would vote because of the governor’s veto would likely not vote for him anyway.”

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  • Veto puts Kentucky in thick of fight over transgender rights

    Veto puts Kentucky in thick of fight over transgender rights

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill aimed at transgender health care puts the state in the middle of a national fight, but with more immediate consequences as the state’s looming election offers an early test on the state-by-state assault on gender-affirming care for minors.

    The veto issued Friday set off competing messages likely to be repeated until the November election — when Bluegrass State voters will decide whether to reward the Democratic governor with a second term or hand over the governor’s office to a Republican. No one seems to know yet how much weight voters will put on the transgender issue with the general election more than seven months away.

    The legislation in Kentucky is part of a widespread movement, with Republican state lawmakers in other states approving extensive measures that restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people this year, from bills targeting trans athletes and drag performers to measures limiting gender-affirming care.

    Beshear framed the Republican-backed bill in Kentucky as an example of government overreach into parental rights. The sweeping bill would ban gender-affirming care for minors — one of many provisions that would affect the lives of young transgender people.

    “At the end of the day, this is about my belief — and, I think, the belief of the majority of Kentuckians — that parents should get to make important medical decisions about their children, not big government,” Beshear told reporters soon after his veto.

    Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature passed the bill by lopsided margins. Lawmakers will reconvene next week for the final two days of this year’s session, when they could vote to override the veto.

    Republicans took immediate aim at the governor’s veto, saying he veered too far for most Kentuckians. Republican Party of Kentucky spokesperson Sean Southard asked: “Is Andy Beshear the governor of Kentucky or California?” He predicted the governor will pay a political price for his action.

    “Once this campaign is over, today may very well be remembered as the day Andy Beshear lost his bid for reelection,” Southard said Friday.

    Republicans could try to capitalize on the political divide over transgender rights to motivate socially conservative voters to flock to the polls in November, when state constitutional offices are on the ballot. Several leading GOP contenders for governor were aligned in condemning Beshear’s veto.

    “If the Republicans choose to make this a centerpiece of the campaign against Beshear, it’s going to hurt him,” said Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based Republican political commentator.

    Beshear cited his own religious faith as a factor in rejecting the bill, saying: “I believe every single child is a child of God.”

    Twelve candidates in all are competing for the Republican nomination for governor in the state’s May primary. Beshear’s bid for a second term is drawing national attention to see if the popular incumbent can win again in the Republican-trending state. Beshear has won praise for his responses to devastating tornadoes and flooding, as well as a series of economic development successes.

    The bill’s opponents say they’ve got the public on their side and predict Beshear will benefit. They pointed to statewide polling released last month showing a majority of Kentuckians believe decisions over a transgender teen’s health care should be left with the parent, not determined by the state.

    “Folks who have never been involved with politics or legislation have been activated by the Kentucky General Assembly’s all-out war on LGBTQ kids,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Kentucky-based Fairness Campaign.

    Social conservatives in Kentucky were dealt a setback in last year’s general election when statewide voters rejected a ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion.

    The transgender health care bill sparked emotional responses from opponents as it was fast-tracked to legislative passage by GOP supermajorities in mid-March. It would ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. It would outlaw gender reassignment surgery for anyone under 18, as well as the use of puberty blockers and hormones, and inpatient and outpatient gender-affirming hospital services.

    Doctors would have to set a timeline to “detransition” children already taking puberty blockers or undergoing hormone therapy. They could continue offering care as they taper a child’s treatments if removing them from the treatment immediately could harm the child.

    The bill’s supporters say they’re trying to protect children from undertaking gender-affirming treatments they might regret as adults. Research shows such regret is rare. Gender-affirming medical treatments have long been available in the U.S. and are endorsed by major medical associations.

    The bill would require school districts to devise bathroom policies that, “at a minimum,” would not allow transgender children to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identities. And it would allow teachers to refuse to refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use and would require schools to notify parents when lessons related to human sexuality are going to be taught.

    Debates over transgender rights garnered considerable attention throughout Kentucky’s legislative session, but in Pike County in eastern Kentucky, the issue has been a non-factor, said Pike County Judge-Executive Ray Jones II, a Democrat who supports Beshear.

    “It’s not even been an issue up here,” said Jones, a former state senator. “People are worried about inflation, they’re worried about the economy, they’re worried about jobs. Nobody’s called my office to discuss transgender issues.”

    Summing up the potential political fallout from the veto, Jones said: “People who would vote because of the governor’s veto would likely not vote for him anyway.”

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  • Mexican kid’s comic Xavier López, ‘Chabelo,’ dies at 88

    Mexican kid’s comic Xavier López, ‘Chabelo,’ dies at 88

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    Xavier López, a Mexican children’s comic better known by his stage name, “Chabelo,” has died at 88

    MEXICO CITY — Xavier López, a Mexican children’s comic better known by his stage name “Chabelo,” has died at 88, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote Saturday.

    López’s best-known work, the Sunday variety show “En Familia con Chabelo”, ran for an astonishing 48 years from 1967 to 2015, Mexico‘s longest-running TV show.

    The Mexican president wrote in his Twitter account that his own eldest son, José Ramón, “woke up early to see him (on television) more than 40 years ago.”

    López, who was no relation to the president, usually performed dressed in kid’s clothing well into his 80s. He helped found a genre of adult comics dressed as kids that became a staple for decades on Mexican television.

    His longevity — he performed in a child’s raspy squeak throughout his career — led to joking speculation he would outlive everyone else in show business.

    López’s agent, Jessica Nevilley, said he died Saturday morning. A private funeral will be held for him later Saturday.

    A U.S. citizen — he was born in Chicago to Mexican parents — López returned to Mexico with his family at a young age and trained as a doctor. But he found his calling in acting.

    The comic’s family wrote on his fan page that López “died suddenly on abdominal complications.”

    He was survived by several children and his wife.

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  • Kids in Utah will need parents’ OK to access social media

    Kids in Utah will need parents’ OK to access social media

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    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Children and teens in Utah would lose access to social media apps such as TikTok if they don’t have parental consent and face other restrictions under a first-in-the-nation law designed to shield young people from the addictive platforms.

    Two laws signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox Thursday prohibit kids under 18 from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anyone who wants to use social media in the state and open the door to lawsuits on behalf of children claiming social media harmed them. Collectively, they seek to prevent children from being lured to apps by addictive features and from having ads promoted to them.

    The companies are expected to sue before the laws take effect in March 2024.

    The crusade against social media in Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature is the latest reflection of how politicians’ perceptions of technology companies has changed, including among typically pro-business Republicans.

    Tech giants like Facebook and Google have enjoyed unbridled growth for over a decade, but amid concerns over user privacy, hate speech, misinformation and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, lawmakers have made Big Tech attacks a rallying cry on the campaign trail and begun trying to rein them in once in office. Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, the platform’s effects on teenagers’ mental health.

    But legislation has stalled on the federal level, pushing states to step in.

    Outside of Utah, lawmakers in red states including Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana and blue states including New Jersey are advancing similar proposals. California, meanwhile, enacted a law last year requiring tech companies to put kids’ safety first by barring them from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally.

    The new Utah laws also require that parents be given access to their child’s accounts. They outline rules for people who want to sue over harms they claim the apps cause. If implemented, lawsuits against social media companies involving kids under 16 will shift the burden of proof and require social media companies show their products weren’t harmful — not the other way around.

    Social media companies could have to design new features to comply with parts of the laws that prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results. Tech companies like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, make most of their money by targeting advertising to their users.

    The wave of legislation and its focus on age verification has garnered pushback from technology companies as well as digital privacy groups known for blasting their data collection practices.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month demanded Cox veto the Utah legislation, saying time limits and age verification would infringe on teens’ rights to free speech and privacy. Moreover, verifying every users’ age would empower social media platforms with more data, like the government-issued identification required, they said.

    If the law is implemented, the digital privacy advocacy group said in a statement, “the majority of young Utahns will find themselves effectively locked out of much of the web.”

    Tech industry lobbyists decried the laws as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on people’s right to exercise the First Amendment online.

    “Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group.

    What’s not clear in Utah’s new law and those under consideration elsewhere is how states plan to enforce the new regulations. Companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. To comply, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent.

    Cox said studies have shown that time spent on social media leads to “poor mental health outcomes” for children.

    “We remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not just here in the state of Utah but across the country legislation that significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps,” he said.

    The set of laws won support from parents groups and child advocates, who generally welcomed them, with some caveats. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on kids and technology, hailed the effort to rein in social media’s addictive features and set rules for litigation, with its CEO saying it “adds momentum for other states to hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online.”

    However, Jim Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense, said giving parents access to children’s social media posts would “deprive kids of the online privacy protections we advocate for.” Age verification and parental consent may hamper kids who want to create accounts on certain platforms, but does little to stop companies from harvesting their data once they’re on, Steyer said.

    The laws are the latest effort from Utah lawmakers focused on the fragility of children in the digital age. Two years ago, Cox signed legislation that called on tech companies to automatically block porn on cellphones and tablets sold in the state, after arguments about the dangers it posed to children found resonance among Utah lawmakers, the majority of whom are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Amid concerns about enforcement, lawmakers ultimately revised that legislation to prevent it from taking effect unless five other states passed similar laws.

    The regulations come as parents and lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about kids and teenagers’ social media use and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting young people’s mental health. The dangers of social media to children is also emerging as a focus for trial lawyers, with addiction lawsuits being filed thorughout the country.

    ___

    Ortutay reported from Oakland, California.

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  • Utah social media law is ambitious, but is it enforceable?

    Utah social media law is ambitious, but is it enforceable?

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    Utah’s sweeping social media legislation passed this week is an ambitious attempt to shield children and teens from the ill effects of social media and empower parents to decide whether their kids should be using apps like TikTok or Instagram.

    What’s not clear is if — and how — the new rules can be enforced and whether they will create unintended consequences for kids and teens already coping with a mental health crisis. And while parental rights are a central theme of Utah’s new laws, experts point out that the rights of parents and the best interests of children are not always aligned.

    For instance, allowing parents to read their kids’ private messages may be harmful to some children, and age verification requirements could give tech companies access to kids’ personal information, including biometric data, if they use tools such as facial recognition to check ages.

    “Children may be put at increased risk if these laws are enforced in such a way that they’re not allowed to some privacy, if they are not allowed some ability for freedom of speech or autonomy,” said Kris Perry, executive director of the nonprofit Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.

    The laws, which will go into effect in a year, impose a digital curfew on people under 18, require minors to get parental consent to sign up for social media apps and force companies to verify the ages of all their Utah users. They also require tech companies to give parents access to their kids’ accounts and private messages, which has raised alarms for child advocates who say this could further harm children’s mental health by depriving them of their right to privacy. This is especially true for LGBTQ+ kids whose parents are not accepting of their identity.

    The rules could drastically transform how people in this conservative state access social media and the internet, and if successful, serve as a model for other states to enact similar legislation. But even if the laws clear the inevitable lawsuits from tech giants, it’s not clear how Utah will be able to enforce them.

    Take age verification, for instance. Various measures exist that can verify a person’s age online. Someone could upload a government ID, consent to the use facial recognition software to prove they are the age they say they are.

    “Some of these verification measures are wonderful, but then also require the collection of sensitive data. And those can pose new risks, especially for marginalized youth,” Perry said. “And it also puts a new kind of burden on parents to monitor their children. These things seem simple and straightforward on their face, but in reality, there are new risks that may emerge in terms of that that collection of additional data on children.”

    Just as teens have managed to obtain fake IDs to drink, they are also savvy at skirting online age regulations.

    “In Southeast Asia they’ve been trying this for years, for decades, and kids always get around it,” said Gaia Bernstein, author of “Unwired,” a book on how to fight technology addiction.

    The problem, she said, is that the Utah rules don’t require social networks to prevent kids from going online. Instead, they are making the parents responsible.

    “I think that’s going to be the weak link in the whole thing, because kids drive their parents insane,” Bernstein said.

    There is no precedent in the United States for such drastic regulation of social media, although several states have similar rules in the works.

    On the federal level, companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. For this reason, social media platforms already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their sites — but children can easily skirt the rules, both with and without their parents’ consent.

    Perry suggests that instead of age verification, there are steps tech companies could take to make their platforms less harmful, less addictive, across the board. For instance, Instagram and TikTok could slow down all users’ ability to mindlessly scroll on their platforms for hours on end.

    The laws are the latest effort from Utah lawmakers focused on children and the information they can access online. Two years ago, Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation that called on tech companies to automatically block porn on cell phones and tablets sold, citing the dangers it posed to children. Amid concerns about enforcement, lawmakers in the deeply religious state revised the bill to prevent it from taking effect unless five other states passed similar laws — which has not happened.

    Still, child development experts are generally hopeful about the growing push to regulate social media and its effects on children.

    “Children have specific developmental needs, and we want to protect them at the same time that we’re trying to push back on Big Tech,” Perry said. “It’s a two-part effort. You have to really put your arm around the kids while you’re pushing Big Tech away.”

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  • Drag community shows up to protest Nebraska drag show bill

    Drag community shows up to protest Nebraska drag show bill

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    LINCOLN, Neb. — A bill that would criminalize exposing anyone 18 or younger to a drag show in Nebraska was the last one to get a public hearing in this year’s legislative session late Friday. But those opposed to the bill made sure the final hearing went out with a flash of glitter and sequins.

    Among scores of people who showed up to voice their opposition were more than a dozen dressed in drag, including heavy makeup, wigs and evening gowns.

    The bill’s main sponsor, conservative Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil, said the legislation is intended to protect children “from being exposed to overly-sexualized and inappropriate behavior far too early.”

    The bill defines drag as a performance by someone presenting a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth. It would make exposing a minor to a drag show a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. The bill comes amidst a national push by conservatives to restrict drag shows, transgender health care, bathroom access and how LGBTQ topics are discussed in schools.

    “Those who allow this kind of perversion should be held accountable,” Murman said.

    But Murman struggled to answer questions from Judiciary Committee members about how his bill would be enforced without violating the constitutional rights of drag performers, parents and others. Sen. Carol Blood, a Democrat from Bellevue asked how he would draw a line between drag and, say, musicians or actors who dress up in makeup and showy costumes for performances.

    When Murman said the difference would come down to how scantily dressed the performer was, another Democrat, Sen. Wendy DeBoer, asked whether that would include a cheerleader in uniform twerking at a game. Murman said it would not.

    “What you’re doing is cherry-picking a demographic, and that’s wrong,” Blood said.

    The fact that the hearing didn’t begin until after 5 p.m. Friday did little to dissuade the public from turning out to speak on it. The crowd filled the Judiciary Committee hearing room and spilled out nearly 100 deep into the Capitol hallways.

    Those supporting the bill expressed conspiracy theories of alleged efforts to indoctrinate children into queer society and used words like “groomers” and “woke culture” to describe drag shows.

    But the vast majority of those attending opposed the bill, including two who identify themselves as Polly Pocket and Baby Girl, who often read picture books to children at an Omaha church’s story hour. They defended such events and drag shows as simple fun and read from the children’s book “Unicorns Are the Worst!” at a rally held before the hearing to protest the drag bill and another to ban gender-affirming care for minors.

    “It’s just queer people showing queer art,” Polly Pocket said.

    The church where they perform, Urban Abbey, has been hosting drag story hours since 2018. But last Saturday, the show was interrupted by an emailed bomb threat that also threatened the church’s pastor and several staff members.

    “I have never in my life received an email that said, ‘Today you will die,’” Urban Abbey’s pastor, the Rev. Debra McKnight, said. “They listed my home address and the addresses of several staff members.”

    Sunday service the next day was also interrupted by an emailed bomb threat, she said, noting that Omaha police and the FBI are investigating.

    The bill could later be advanced or die in committee.

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  • Utah social media law means kids need approval from parents

    Utah social media law means kids need approval from parents

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    SALT LAKE CITY — Children and teens in Utah would lose access to social media apps such as TikTok if they don’t have parental consent and face other restrictions under a first-in-the-nation law designed to shield young people from the addictive platforms.

    Two laws signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox Thursday prohibit kids under 18 from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anyone who wants to use social media in the state and open the door to lawsuits on behalf of children claiming social media harmed them. Collectively, they seek to prevent children from being lured to apps by addictive features and from having ads promoted to them.

    The companies are expected to sue before the laws take effect in March 2024.

    The crusade against social media in Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature is the latest reflection of how politicians’ perceptions of technology companies has changed, including among typically pro-business Republicans.

    Tech giants like Facebook and Google have enjoyed unbridled growth for over a decade, but amid concerns over user privacy, hate speech, misinformation and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, lawmakers have made Big Tech attacks a rallying cry on the campaign trail and begun trying to rein them in once in office. Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, the platform’s effects on teenagers’ mental health.

    But legislation has stalled on the federal level, pushing states to step in.

    Outside of Utah, lawmakers in red states including Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana and blue states including New Jersey are advancing similar proposals. California, meanwhile, enacted a law last year requiring tech companies to put kids’ safety first by barring them from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally.

    The new Utah laws also require that parents be given access to their child’s accounts. They outline rules for people who want to sue over harms they claim the apps cause. If implemented, lawsuits against social media companies involving kids under 16 will shift the burden of proof and require social media companies show their products weren’t harmful — not the other way around.

    Social media companies could have to design new features to comply with parts of the laws that prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results. Tech companies like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, make most of their money by targeting advertising to their users.

    The wave of legislation and its focus on age verification has garnered pushback from technology companies as well as digital privacy groups known for blasting their data collection practices.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month demanded Cox veto the Utah legislation, saying time limits and age verification would infringe on teens’ rights to free speech and privacy. Moreover, verifying every users’ age would empower social media platforms with more data, like the government-issued identification required, they said.

    If the law is implemented, the digital privacy advocacy group said in a statement, “the majority of young Utahns will find themselves effectively locked out of much of the web.”

    Tech industry lobbyists decried the laws as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on people’s right to exercise the First Amendment online.

    “Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group.

    What’s not clear in Utah’s new law and those under consideration elsewhere is how states plan to enforce the new regulations. Companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. To comply, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent.

    Cox said studies have shown that time spent on social media leads to “poor mental health outcomes” for children.

    “We remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not just here in the state of Utah but across the country legislation that significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps,” he said.

    The set of laws won support from parents groups and child advocates, who generally welcomed them, with some caveats. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on kids and technology, hailed the effort to rein in social media’s addictive features and set rules for litigation, with its CEO saying it “adds momentum for other states to hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online.”

    However, Jim Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense, said giving parents access to children’s social media posts would “deprive kids of the online privacy protections we advocate for.” Age verification and parental consent may hamper kids who want to create accounts on certain platforms, but does little to stop companies from harvesting their data once they’re on, Steyer said.

    The laws are the latest effort from Utah lawmakers focused on the fragility of children in the digital age. Two years ago, Cox signed legislation that called on tech companies to automatically block porn on cellphones and tablets sold in the state, after arguments about the dangers it posed to children found resonance among Utah lawmakers, the majority of whom are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Amid concerns about enforcement, lawmakers ultimately revised that legislation to prevent it from taking effect unless five other states passed similar laws.

    The regulations come as parents and lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about kids and teenagers’ social media use and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting young people’s mental health. The dangers of social media to children is also emerging as a focus for trial lawyers, with addiction lawsuits being filed thorughout the country.

    ___

    Ortutay reported from Oakland, California.

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  • Utah social media law means kids need approval from parents

    Utah social media law means kids need approval from parents

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    SALT LAKE CITY — SALT LAKE CITY (AP) —

    Children and teenagers in Utah would lose access to social media apps such as TikTok if they don’t have parental consent and would face other restrictions under a first-in-the-nation law designed to shield young people from the addictive apps.

    The two bills Cox signed into law also prohibit kids under 18 from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anyone who wants to use social media in the state and seek to prevent tech companies from luring kids to their apps using addictive features.

    The laws passed through Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature are the latest reflection of how politicians’ perceptions of technology companies are changing — and that includes pro-business Republicans.

    Tech giants like Facebook and Google have enjoyed unbridled growth for over a decade, but amid concerns over user privacy, hate speech, misinformation and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, lawmakers have begun trying to rein them in. Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, TikTok’s effects on teenagers’ mental health.

    But legislation has stalled on the federal level, pushing states to step in.

    Other red states, such as Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana have similar proposals in the works, along with New Jersey. California, meanwhile, enacted a law last year requiring tech companies to put kids’ safety first by barring them from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally.

    In addition to the parental consent provisions, social media companies would likely have to design new features to comply with parts of the law to prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results. Tech companies like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, make most of their money by targeting advertising to their users.

    What’s not clear from the Utah bill and others is how the states plan to enforce the new regulations. Companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. For this reason, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children can easily get around it, both with and without their parents’ consent.

    Cox said studies have shown that time spent on social media leads to “poor mental health outcomes” for children.

    “We remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not just here in the state of Utah but across the country legislation that significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps,” he said.

    Children’s advocacy groups generally welcomed the law, with some caveats. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focusing on kids and technology, hailed the law aimed at reining in social media’s addictive features. It “adds momentum for other states to hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online,” said Jim Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense.

    He pointed to similar legislation in the works in California and New Jersey — and said the safety and mental well-being of kids and teens depend on legislation like this to hold big tech accountable for creating safer and healthier experiences online.

    But Steyer said the other bill Cox signed giving parents access to children’s social media posts would “deprive kids of the online privacy protections we advocate for. The law also requires age verification and parental consent for minors to create a social media account, which doesn’t get to the root of the problem – kids and teens will still be exposed to companies’ harmful data collection and design practices once they are on the platform.”

    The laws are the latest effort from Utah lawmakers focused on children and the information they can access online. Two years ago, Cox signed legislation that called on tech companies to automatically block porn on cell phones and tablets sold, citing the dangers it posed to children. Amid concerns about enforcement, lawmakers in the deeply religious state revised the bill to prevent it from taking effect unless five other states passed similar laws.

    The social media regulations come as parents and lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about kids and teenagers’ use and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting young people’s mental health.

    It is set to take effect in March 2024, and Cox has previously said he anticipates social media companies will challenge it in court.

    Tech industry lobbyists quickly decried the laws as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on people’s right to exercise the First Amendment online.

    “Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group.

    __

    Ortutay reported from Oakland, California.

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  • ‘Scream as loud as you can’: 5 boys rescued from NYC tunnel

    ‘Scream as loud as you can’: 5 boys rescued from NYC tunnel

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    Five mischievous boys had to be rescued after they crawled through a storm drain tunnel in New York City and got lost

    NEW YORK — Five mischievous boys had to be rescued after they crawled through a storm drain tunnel in New York City and got lost, authorities said.

    In audio released by the fire department, 911 dispatchers work to pinpoint the boys’ exact location and then tell them to scream once rescuers are close enough to hear.

    “Now you can scream as loud as you can,” a dispatcher says. “They want you to scream and yell.”

    The five boys, aged 11 and 12, crawled into a storm drain on Staten Island at about 6 p.m. Tuesday, fire department officials said at a news conference Wednesday.

    The boys walked about a quarter mile and then called 911 when they couldn’t find their way back, officials said.

    “We’re stuck in the sewer,” one of the boys says on the recording. “You’re stuck where?” a dispatcher responds.

    A second dispatcher says he is familiar with the area and tries to determine exactly where the boys are. “Once you went down, was the sewer left, right, straight — where was it?” the dispatcher asks. “I need you to guide me.”

    When sirens can be heard, the dispatcher tells the boys to scream. At first the boys fear that the rescuers aren’t stopping.

    “It sounded like they went past us,” one boy says.

    The dispatcher assures the boys, “They’re not going anywhere, we’re going to get you out of there.”

    Soon an emergency responder can be heard saying “We might have hands on the kids right now,” and then, “We have all five children removed from the sewer.”

    Firefighters said the boys were in the tunnel for about an hour. The boys and one firefighter were taken to a hospital for evaluation, but none had significant injuries, officials said.

    “Amazing that the cellphone worked in the tunnel,” FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens told reporters. “That was a key component of us finding them.”

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  • 7 Ways to Help Your Kids Make Smart Financial Decisions | Entrepreneur

    7 Ways to Help Your Kids Make Smart Financial Decisions | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As a father of five kids (ages 7 to 18) and a fiduciary wealth manager with 21 years of experience, I’ve seen firsthand how your family’s money attitude and communication shape your family’s future. How you talk about money, how you feel about it and what you say about it leaves an impact for generations. Disagreements over money are one of the leading causes of divorce, and a lack of financial competency leaves your young people unprepared for their financial future. That’s why I’m going to help you break the taboo surrounding money talks in your family.

    Many parents grew up in a culture where discussing money was considered improper or taboo. However, this mentality does more harm than good. Kids shielded from discussions about money grow up with ignorance, or worse, fear around making money decisions. This often leads to poor money moves, resulting in personal financial insecurity, stress and many long-term financial struggles.

    To ensure your kids feel confident about money, it’s essential to start teaching them about money from a young age. Here are a few ways that I’ve been teaching my own five kids about money:

    Related: Here’s How to Talk to Your Kids About Money Management (Infographic)

    1. Open checking accounts for them at early ages

    This is a great way to teach your kids the basics of managing money. They can learn how to deposit and withdraw money, balance their account and use their debit card responsibly. I recommend opening your kids a checking account once they turn 8.

    2. Stop giving out allowances

    Don’t just give out allowances because your kids made it through another week of life. What’s that teaching them? Instead, have your kids earn money by doing “extra” work around the house. This can teach them the value of hard work and the connection between work and money.

    3. Pay your kids to read books on personal finance or goal-setting

    Have your kids read books on personal finance or goal-setting to help them build their financial literacy. After they read the book, have them write a one-page summary or create a personal video of what they learned from the book — and reward them for doing so. This will help them develop their reading and writing skills while also learning about money management.

    4. Teach them how to save, donate and spend

    Encourage your kids to save and donate a high percentage of the money they earn. We’ve trained our kids to save/invest at least 30% of their earnings, donate 20% and use the remaining 50% for their own spending on things like movie tickets, clothes or shopping. This kind of disciplined saving, investing and giving philosophy fosters an abundance mindset and will instill good financial habits for their future.

    Related: 5 Ways to Build Your Kid’s Financial Literacy

    5. Tell them about your own financial goals and plans

    Another way to involve your kids in financial discussions is by discussing your own financial goals and plans with them. This can help them understand the importance of setting goals and how to make plans to achieve them. For example, if you’re saving up for a down payment on a house, you can involve your kids by discussing how much money you need to save, how long it will take and what steps you’ll take to reach your goal. They will feel included and even committed to helping your family reach your goals — and maybe they’ll even contribute in their own way.

    6. Involve them in the planning process of big purchases

    Involving your children in the planning process of big purchases like buying a home, a car or a family vacation can make your kids feel more invested in your family’s financial well-being and give them a sense of responsibility. For example, when planning a family vacation, you can involve your kids in cash flow planning and discuss how much money will be allocated for transportation, accommodations, food and activities.

    7. Be transparent about the cost of everything

    When you go grocery shopping, talk about how much things cost and how much money you’re spending. This can help your kids understand the true value of money and how much things really cost. Share how you worked hard and planned to have enough money to buy the groceries for your family.

    By openly discussing money with your kids, you help them develop a healthy and responsible relationship with money. They’ll be better equipped to make smart financial decisions, manage their own finances and ultimately achieve their financial goals.

    Related: Investing In Our Youth: The Financial Literacy Movement

    It’s important to note that teaching your kids about money doesn’t have to be a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that should start early and continue throughout their lives. As time goes on, your conversations will be more advanced and mature.

    By breaking the taboo surrounding money talks in your family, you can help ensure your kids are prepared for their financial future. They will feel confident when thinking and talking about money. They’ll grow up with the skills and knowledge needed to make smart financial decisions, ultimately leading to greater financial security, stability and success.

    In conclusion, don’t keep money a secret from your kids. Don’t expect them to suddenly figure it out once they leave the house after high school, even if that’s what happened to you. That doesn’t help anyone. Instead, be open and honest about money, and teach your kids about financial responsibility and accountability from a young age. Remember to involve your kids in financial decisions and discussions, lead by example, and make financial education an ongoing process. Teach them to be confident and self-reliant with money as they grow from children to teenagers and beyond. By doing so, you will be setting them up for a lifetime of financial success.

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    Chad Willardson

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  • CHOP Researchers Develop First-Of-Its-Kind Prediction Model for Newborn Seizures

    CHOP Researchers Develop First-Of-Its-Kind Prediction Model for Newborn Seizures

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    Newswise — Philadelphia, March 22, 2023 – Researchers from the Neuroscience Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a prediction model that determines which newborn babies are likely to experience seizures in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This model could be incorporated into routine care to help the clinical team decide which babies will need electroencephalograms (EEGs) and which babies can be safely managed in the Neonatal Care Unit without monitoring through EEGs. This would allow families and providers to care for babies without intrusive and unnecessary procedures. The findings were published by The Lancet Digital Health.

    Neonatal seizures are a common neurological issue in newborn babies. In particular, approximately 30% of newborn babies with temporary lack of oxygen to the brain (known as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE) will have seizures. Most of these seizures can only be detected through EEG monitoring and not simply through clinical observation, an important lesson that has shaped the management of babies with seizures in the last two decades. Newborns with HIE are at an increased risk for neurobehavioral problems and epilepsy later in life, and detecting and treating seizures is important to reduce seizure-induced injury, thereby improving outcomes for newborns with early seizures.

    Current guidelines suggest that newborns with HIE undergo four to five days of EEG monitoring to detect seizures. However, this approach is not always feasible, as many of these babies receive care in NICUs that do not have access to continuous EEG (CEEG). Even NICUs in large healthcare networks often only have limited EEG resources, especially as the interpretation of EEG readings is time intensive for the entire care team, including physicians and technologists.

    Predicting which newborns will experience seizures is complex, and prior attempts to predict future seizures using clinical and EEG data have not yielded highly accurate results. To help address these issues, researchers at CHOP used data from a recently developed EEG reporting form that is used for all EEGs to build prediction models using machine learning methods. 

    “In this study, we used data from the EEGs of more than 1,000 newborns to build models to predict neonatal seizures,” first study author Jillian McKee, MD, PhD, a pediatric epilepsy fellow in the Division of Neurology and the Pediatric Epilepsy Program at CHOP. “This data helped us optimize which newborns should receive EEG monitoring in the NICU.”

    The researchers built their seizure prediction models based on standardized EEG features reported in the electronic medical records. The retrospective study found that these models could predict seizures, and particularly seizures in newborns with HIE, with more than 90% accuracy. The models could be tuned to not miss seizures, performing with sensitivity of up to 97% in the overall cohort and 100% among newborns with HIE while maintaining high precision. The authors indicated that this is the first study reporting on a seizure prediction model based on clinically-derived standardized reports. The study team has made the model publicly available as an online tool. 

    “If we can further validate this model, it could enable a more targeted use of limited EEG resources by reducing EEG use in low-risk patients, which will make care of babies with neurological concerns in the NICU more personalized and focussed,” said senior study author Ingo Helbig, MD, a pediatric neurologist in the Division of Neurology and co-director of ENGIN (Epilepsy NeuroGenetics Institute) at CHOP. “We believe incorporating this model into real-time clinical practice could greatly improve the quality and efficiency of the care we deliver in these critical early days of life.”

    “This project indicated we can efficiently acquire standardized data as part of clinical pactice to drive research which enables us to provide better care,” said Nicholas Abend, MD, a co-author and Senior Medical Director within the Neuroscience Center at CHOP. “We are already using this same approach to collect data on all EEG reports, thousands of epilepsy visits over time, and numerous other domains within the Neuroscience Center, thus establishing a true learning healthcare system.”

    McKee et al, “Leveraging electronic medical record-embedded standardized electroencephalogram reporting to develop neonatal seizure prediction models: a retrospective cohort study.” Lancet Digit Health. Online March 22, 2023. DOI: 10.1016/PIIS2589-7500(23)00004-3. 

    About Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: A non-profit, charitable organization, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation’s first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, the 595-bed hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. The institution has a well-established history of providing advanced pediatric care close to home through its CHOP Care Network, which includes more than 50 primary care practices, specialty care and surgical centers, urgent care centers, and community hospital alliances throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as a new inpatient hospital with a dedicated pediatric emergency department in King of Prussia. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.

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    Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

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  • How frustrated parents of Los Angeles students are getting creative managing their children while school is out | CNN

    How frustrated parents of Los Angeles students are getting creative managing their children while school is out | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Tucked into a small art studio at a California university, Sea Krob took their 3-year-old and 7-year-old to graduate school with them because they didn’t have a daycare option this week.

    They are one of the parents of the half-million students who are out of school for three days because of the Los Angeles Unified School District school worker strike.

    “It’s really frustrating that the one thing that was supposed to be dependable is not,” Krob, 32, told CNN. “And it’s not because the workers are striking, but it’s because LAUSD would rather make time to find volunteers and make plans for our kids not to be in school than just meet the needs of the people that they’ve employed.”

    The stakes are high for school workers, including bus drivers, custodians and other support staff represented by Service Employees International Union Local 99 asking for more equitable wages, more work hours and more staffing to provide better student services.

    It is the same district that shut down for a six-day strike in 2019, when teachers went to the picket lines to fight for smaller class sizes, more staff and an increase in wages.

    This strike has left parents scrambling to find childcare, many cobbling together creative solutions to keep their children on track with school, while also working their full-time jobs.

    For Krob, that’s meant notifying individual professors of their situation and asking if they can bring their two children with to classes. Krob is a full-time graduate student pursuing art at California State University, Long Beach.

    “My partner is out of sick days for the year already – it’s March – so I am on the whims of whatever professor I have to have my kids come with me,” they said.

    For safety and liability reasons, Krob cannot take their children into the art lab where they work, so they had to forgo their lab hours this week, they said. Instead, they are getting creative with how they spend time during the strike and borrowing art supplies from a university office.

    “I just stretched out a big piece of paper so that we could color on it for the three days and make art, hang out and do our best,” they said.

    Krob commutes on public transit two hours each way to get to the university from their Los Angeles home. It’s been an extra challenge doing that with their two children in the pouring rain this week.

    What frustrates Krob, who supports the staff on strike, is that the resources for parents are through the school system, which is shut down, they said. They wish there was more support for parents.

    “I think that the people who are striking are totally within their right and they should be able to engage in a strike and parents still have resources to be able to take care of their kids, and that shouldn’t be cut off.”

    Sandra Colton-Medici, an online business entrepreneur, has two children in two different situations: Only one of them gets to go to school this week.

    Her 5-year-old daughter attends kindergarten at a LAUSD school, while her 3-year-old attends some classes at a private school.

    Sandra Colton-Medici smiles with her two children, aged 5 and 3.

    “I had to wake up both of them and say, ‘One of you is going to school and the other one is not,” Colton-Medici said. “That was a little bit difficult for one to say, ‘But what do you mean I’m not going to school?’”

    Her 5-year-old didn’t understand that her teachers and support staff are marching outside the school, but they aren’t in school today, she said. The 44-year-old broke it down into simple terms to explain the strike to her children.

    “The teachers and the support staff there, they’re going to talk to their employer, their boss, to say we need more to take care of ourselves,” Colton-Medici said. “In order to do that, they have to take a break from school.”

    In a moment of innocence, she says her oldest daughter asked, “‘So do they need money? I have money in my coin purse.’”

    Her daughter’s teacher provided informational and educational packets to do at home and Colton-Medici is doing her best to act as a fill-in educator – all while running her business from home.

    “If I had to grade myself with how I’m dealing with their time off from school and me balancing that thing that people call work-life balance, I would probably say I’m giving myself a 10 for effort and like a six for like completion,” she said. “I know that there’s going to be something that I’ve missed.”

    Colton-Medici’s husband is working in the office, but he stayed at home Tuesday morning to care for their older daughter while she took their toddler to her school. She’s grateful she can also call on her mother if she needs backup childcare, especially since she said there was enough advance notice of the strike to make plans.

    “I know by Thursday, in a few days, it might be a little overwhelming, especially since I do run my own business from home,” she said.

    Thousands of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and SEIU members rally outside the LAUSD headquarters in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

    Colton-Medici said she feels for the support staff when she sees them ushering kids into school, walking them to the nurse or giving them a hug at the end of the day. She knows that some of those staffers work as crossing guards and have double duties.

    She said it’s important to support the people on strike and make sure they are valued. She reminds people that some of these support staffers also have children in school, some of whom may be at home because their parents are on strike.

    “Yes, we are pseudo inconvenienced, but how do you get inconvenienced by your own child?” Colton-Medici said. “I’m just trying to be better, trying to be more of an educator today, in addition to being able to hug my kids because I think that’s really important too.”

    While the strike is inconvenient for parents in the district, Wade Armstrong says he and his wife have the flexibility to make it work with their son, Declan, being out of school.

    “We’re really lucky because my wife and I, we both work at home,” Armstrong, 47, told CNN. “It’s not such a big impact in terms of we have to find child care and stuff like that, which some of our friends do have to do.”

    Yet, the parents are concerned because of the learning time that’s lost for all children during the strike.

    “It’s annoying and we’re sad to see the learning loss for our kids,” Armstrong said. “It’s really coming on the heels of the holidays and with spring break coming up soon, it really feels like we’ve barely even had a spring semester.”

    Their son is a fourth grader, but this isn’t the first time the 9-year-old has been affected by a strike. He was in kindergarten during the 2019 LAUSD strike.

    The previous strike was tougher for the Armstrongs to deal with, as neither of them were working from home and they needed child care. This time around, their son is older and more self-sufficient.

    Armstrong said the materials sent home from school aren’t directly related to what’s going on in the classroom, so he’s focusing more on spending time with his son and having some of Declan’s friends over to help other parents.

    Wade Armstrong and his son, Declan, play with their dogs while Declan is at home on a school day due to the LAUSD strike.

    While Armstrong said he’s “disappointed” that the district and the union couldn’t reach a resolution, he understands why so many staffers are on the picket lines.

    Armstrong said his son talks fondly about classroom aides who help special needs students, and they make time to help the whole class with projects. Cafeteria workers are also doing admirable work, especially after feeding so many children during the pandemic, he said.

    “There’s a lot of the aides and staff in our schools who really aren’t getting paid much at all and I know how essential they are from what my son tells me about his days in school,” Armstrong said. “I hope they get paid.”

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  • How to Build a Business Growth Mindset in Adolescents | Entrepreneur

    How to Build a Business Growth Mindset in Adolescents | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As parents and educators, we all want our adolescents to succeed. We want them to grow into confident, capable and resilient adults who can overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset and skill set in adolescents is highly important, even if they don’t have aspirations to become business owners or entrepreneurs. Here are some ways you can encourage adolescent growth:

    1. Develop a growth mindset

    Developing a growth mindset is critical to adolescent growth and success. Adolescents who believe their abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication tend to perform better than those who believe their abilities are fixed. Encouraging a growth mindset requires a shift from focusing on innate abilities to valuing effort and resilience. Praising effort over innate ability can help reinforce this shift in mindset.

    For example, when a teenager tries to learn a new skill or complete a challenging task, it’s essential to acknowledge and praise their hard work. When faced with setbacks or failure, it’s important to teach adolescents that these experiences are opportunities to learn and grow. Emphasizing the importance of persistence and resilience can help adolescents develop the skills and mindset needed to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Encouraging a growth mindset in adolescents can help them develop confidence in their ability to learn and grow, setting them on a path to long-term success.

    Related: How to Raise Entrepreneurial Minded Kids

    2. Encourage independence

    Adolescents need opportunities to make decisions and take responsibility for their actions, which helps them build confidence and decision-making skills. As a parent or guardian, it’s essential to encourage your teenager to take on tasks and projects that challenge them and allow them to make decisions on their own. Providing them with age-appropriate responsibilities, such as managing their schedule, completing household chores or organizing a community service project, can help them develop the skills needed to be self-sufficient and independent.

    While it may be tempting to micromanage or take over tasks to ensure they are done correctly, resisting this urge and giving adolescents the space they need to learn and grow is essential. This will help them develop a sense of ownership and responsibility, which can lead to increased motivation and achievement. Encouraging independence in adolescents can be a delicate balance between offering guidance and support while also giving them the space to make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes.

    3. Provide mentorship

    Mentorship and guidance from adults/professionals with experience in areas your adolescent is interested in can be one of the fastest ways for them to learn. Encourage them to seek out mentors in their field of interest, and provide them with access to resources and opportunities that can help them grow and develop. Help them find local networking events, and attend with them. Take an interest in what they’re doing, and share their excitement for their passions.

    Related: 8 Entrepreneurial Skills Your Kids Need to Succeed in Life and Work (Infographic)

    4. Resilience is key

    Life is full of ups and downs, and adolescents need to learn how to bounce back from setbacks and challenges. Encourage them to focus on their strengths and accomplishments rather than dwelling on their mistakes or shortcomings. Help them develop a growth mindset, where they view challenges and failures as opportunities to learn and grow rather than as a reflection of their abilities. Praising their effort and hard work, rather than their innate abilities, can also help foster a growth mindset.

    It’s important to note that building resilience is an ongoing process that takes time and effort. Adolescents may struggle with setbacks and challenges, but with your guidance and support, they can learn to cope and bounce back stronger than ever. Encourage them to be patient with themselves and to focus on their progress rather than perfection. If your teen is struggling with confidence, there is nothing wrong with enrolling them in an individual teen therapy program to gain expert help. By teaching coping strategies and promoting a positive mindset, you can help your teenager develop resilience and thrive in all areas of their life.

    5. Encourage entrepreneurship

    Entrepreneurship is an excellent way to foster adolescent growth and success. Encourage adolescents to explore their entrepreneurial interests by providing access to resources and opportunities such as business plan competitions, internships and mentorship programs. Instill creativity, and harness the four pillars for raising an entrepreneurial child.

    Related: 3 Ways to Raise Your Kids to Think — and Solve Problems — Like an Entrepreneur

    6. Teach financial literacy

    Financial literacy is critical to life and personal success. Teach adolescents how to manage their finances, including budgeting, saving and investing. This can help them make informed financial decisions in the future.

    Encouraging adolescent growth and success requires a multifaceted approach considering personal and professional development. By fostering a growth mindset, encouraging independence, promoting creativity, providing mentorship, promoting resilience, encouraging entrepreneurship and teaching financial literacy, we can help adolescents reach their full potential and achieve success in life.

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  • Diet and exercise programs alone won’t tackle childhood obesity

    Diet and exercise programs alone won’t tackle childhood obesity

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    Newswise — Focusing on immediate fixes such as diet and exercise programs alone won’t curb the tide of childhood obesity, according to a new study that for the first time maps the complex pathways that lead to obesity in childhood.

    Coordinated by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre the study finds children whose parents did not complete high school and who live with social disadvantage, were more likely to be affected by overweight or obesity in mid-adolescence. High school completion is a strong indicator of socio-economic status.

    These factors were ‘on ramps’ which flow down to influence the body mass index (BMI) of parents, in turn providing immediate lifestyle impacts (diet, sedentary time) on a child’s risk of developing obesity.  

    Paediatrician Professor Louise Baur of the University of Sydney said the research explains why most current public health policies to prevent childhood obesity have had limited success.

    “We tend to ignore the root causes of childhood obesity which include social disadvantage, and of course, this is not something parents or children choose for themselves,” said Professor Baur, co-author from the University’s Charles Perkins Centre.

    “While healthy eating and activity interventions are important, the solutions lie not just in the domain of health departments. We need to see many government departments working together to consider how to make structural changes to reduce social inequality if we want to change Australia’s current trajectory.”

    Other interesting findings from the research include how different drivers of obesity play out at different life stages, particularly the influence of free time activity after the age of eight.

    There are also different influences on how free time is spent and influenced for boys versus girls. For boys, more electronic gaming leads to less active free time. For girls, better sleep quality leads to longer sleep time and more active free time.

    Obesity in children

    Childhood obesity occurs when a child is significantly overweight for their age and height. It can lead to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, psychological effects and even premature death.

    In Australia, 1 in 4 school-aged children and adolescents are affected by overweight or obesity, with 1 in 12 affected by obesity. It is more common in those living in regional and remote areas, those from lower socioeconomic areas, those from one-parent families and those with a disability.

    How was the study conducted?

    The study, published in BMC Medicine today, drew on data from ‘Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children,’ a nationally representative sample of over 10,000 Australian Children.

    The team of leading scientists and clinicians­­—bringing together the fields of data science, biology, paediatrics and public health—spent close to two years using state-of-the-art statistical modelling (Bayesian network modelling) and informed analysis to untangle a complex web of on-ramps and causal factors, many of which interplay.

    Senior author Professor Sally Cripps of the University of Technology Sydney said the knowledge gained from this study is vital for policy makers moving forward and could not have been achieved without this diverse skill-set.

    “This is a truly multidisciplinary piece of research. Data alone is never enough to uncover the complex set of interacting factors which lead to childhood obesity. But by combining the skills of mathematicians and computer scientists with obesity and nutritional experts we have been able to predict and model what has never been clearly articulated before – showing the complex interplay between multiple upstream, downstream and causal factors, and how these play out over time for children and families,” said Cripps, Director of Technology at the Human Technology Institute.

    Lead author and statistician Wanchuang Zhu, also of the University of Technology Sydney and an affiliate of the Charles Perkins Centre said: “To our knowledge this is first time anyone has used the advanced statistical network modelling to analyse the complex factors that lead to childhood obesity. It provides us with a much more complete picture.”

    Key findings

    • Childhood obesity is largely a by-product of socio-economic status
    • Parental high school levels (both paternal and maternal) serve as on-ramps to childhood obesity
    • When children are aged 2 to 4 years the causal pathway is: socio-economic status/parental high school level -> parental BMI -> child BMI
    • When children are aged 8 to 10 years an additional pathway emerged focused on how children spend their leisure time: parental high school level /socio economic status -> electronic games ->free time activity-> child BMC
    • The upstream influences on free time activity were different in boys compared with girls.
    • The strong and independent link between parent’s BMIs and childhood BMI suggests a biological link—high weight runs in families, and this is in part because of shared genes.

    The work is a collaboration between scientists and clinicians from the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney and CSIRO – brought together by the Charles Perkins Centre, a research initiative committed to collaborative and multidisciplinary research to tackle obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and related conditions.

    “This study is exactly why the Charles Perkins Centre was founded, to bring together people with special skill sets from different academic and clinical backgrounds to find new ways of thinking about and solving the most complex challenges of our time,” said Professor Stephen Simpson, Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre and Executive Director of Obesity Australia.

    The authors express sincere gratitude to the families who contributed their data and acknowledge the generous support of Paul Ramsay Foundation.

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    University of Sydney

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  • PNAS honors FSU researchers’ study linking lead exposure to IQ loss

    PNAS honors FSU researchers’ study linking lead exposure to IQ loss

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    BYLINE: Mark Blackwell Thomas

    Newswise — The editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal is honoring a pair of Florida State University researchers for their 2022 study which found that childhood exposure to lead has robbed Americans an average of 2.6 IQ points per person.  

    Associate Professor of Sociology Michael McFarland and Assistant Professor of Sociology Matt Hauer are the lead authors of the study “Half of US Population Exposed to Adverse Lead Levels in Early Childhood,” which was published in PNAS.  

    Along with co-author Aaron Rueben, a post-doctoral scholar at Duke University, McFarland and Hauer earned the Cozarelli Prize, which PNAS established in 2005 to recognize recently published papers of “outstanding scientific quality and originality.” The study is one of six published in 2022 to earn this recognition. 

    “The level of competition to publish in PNAS is so high, so you’re honored to have just done that,” McFarland said. “To then compete with the work of people in the academy from all over the world, all social science disciplines, is an honor. We’re grateful people saw value in the work we’re doing.”  

    The researchers used data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Geological Survey. A standard deviation for IQ points is about 15 points, Hauer said, before noting that makes 2.6 points per person, “pretty significant.”  

    IQ is a standard intelligence measure derived from a series of standardized tests. Among other purposes, scores can be used for educational and job placement and the assessment of intellectual disabilities.  

    The vast amount of the lead exposure the researchers examined came through automotive exhaust, due to the use of leaded gasoline, which began in 1923 and ceased in 1996. Lead’s damage is most pronounced, Hauer said, in the intervening seven decades.  

    McFarland and Hauer found that estimated lead-linked deficits were greatest for people born between 1966 and 1970, a population of about 20.8 million people, which experienced an average deficit of 5.9 IQ points per person.  

    The study was picked up by numerous national and international media outlets, including NBC News and Discover Magazine. Hauer thinks it was the far-reaching implications of the study that fed interest.  

    “Half the U.S. population was exposed to high levels of lead when they were children,” he said. “That is a substantial segment of the US population.” 

    Harkening to the decades-long fight by citizens and special interest groups to remove lead from gasoline, McFarland said he hopes the study fuels discussion about dangerous substances and the environment. 

    “People were up against an industry that didn’t want to change because they were making money — similar to what we saw with cigarettes — an industry that is fighting science and public health officials,” he said. “I think that one of the things our study shows is the damage of the assumption or policy of safe until proven otherwise.”  

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  • Obesity risk may pass from mothers to daughters

    Obesity risk may pass from mothers to daughters

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    Newswise — WASHINGTON—Women with obesity may share risk for the disease with their daughters, but not their sons, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

    Obesity is a common, serious and costly disease affecting nearly half of the adults and 20 percent of children in the United States. It costs an estimated $173 billion in medical care costs. People with obesity are at higher risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, heart issues, and many other conditions.

    “These findings highlight that girls born to mothers who have obesity or have high amounts of body fat may be at higher risk of gaining excess body fat themselves,” said Rebecca J. Moon, B.M., Ph.D., M.R.C.P.C.H., of the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton in Southampton, U.K. “Further studies are needed to understand why this is happening, but our findings suggest that approaches to addressing body weight and composition should start very early in life, particularly in girls born to mothers with obesity and overweight.”

    The researchers measured body fat and muscle in 240 children (9 years old or younger) and their parents in early childhood. They used this data to determine whether the body mass index (BMI)—a screening tool for overweight and obesity—and the amount of body fat and muscle in the child was related to that of their parents.

    They found the girls had similar BMI and fat mass to their mothers, suggesting that girls born to mothers who have obesity or have high fat mass are at high risk of also developing obesity or overweight. The researchers did not find the same association between boys and their mothers or either girls or boys and their fathers.

    The other authors of this study are Stefania D’Angelo of the University of Southampton; Christopher R. Holroyd of the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in Southampton, U.K.; Sarah R. Crozier of the University of Southampton and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration Wessex in Southampton, U.K.; Justin H. Davies of the University of Southampton, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust; and Keith M. Godfrey, Cyrus Cooper and Nicholas C. Harvey of the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, the University of Southampton, the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, and the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in Southampton, U.K.

    The study received funding from the Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, the Seventh Framework Program, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Horizon 2020 Framework Program, and the National Institute on Aging.

    The manuscript, “Parent-Offspring Associations in Body Composition: Findings From The Southampton Women’s Survey Prospective Cohort Study,” was published online, ahead of print.

    # # #

    Endocrinologists are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time, from diabetes and obesity to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. The Endocrine Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of scientists devoted to hormone research and physicians who care for people with hormone-related conditions.

    The Society has more than 18,000 members, including scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at www.endocrine.org. Follow us on Twitter at @TheEndoSociety and @EndoMedia.

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    Endocrine Society

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  • Special college fair helps young cancer patients ‘unlock’ their future

    Special college fair helps young cancer patients ‘unlock’ their future

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    BYLINE: Hilary Brown

    Newswise — LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 15, 2023) — On Thursday, March 2, 42 teens and young adults, all patients in the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program (AYA), attended “Unlock Your Future,” the inaugural college and career program for oncology and hematology patients.

    Part of the DanceBlue Kentucky Children’s Hospital Hematology/Oncology Clinic, the AYA program provides treatment and support for cancer and hematology patients age 15-29. This event was an opportunity for patients to meet with representatives from a number of colleges, universities and trade programs to discuss application processes, financial aid and scholarship opportunities. For these patients, it’s a chance to be regular high school students and start thinking about those next steps.

    Many patients experience long hospital stays and inconsistent school attendance because of their illnesses. On top of the stress of a cancer diagnosis, they also must contend with possibly falling behind in their schoolwork or even leave school while in treatment.

    “A cancer diagnosis can derail their education,” said Courtney Emery, one of the DanceBlue Clinic’s school intervention specialists. “We help them stay on track so they can finish high school or get their GED.”

    Emery and her colleague Emily Dillow along with administrator Elizabeth Henderson lead the PAWS (Providing Assistance With School) Program and serve as educational liaisons between a patient and their school. They educate staff and teachers about their patients’ illnesses, coordinate home instruction and help students and educators navigate additional resources to minimize the educational gaps that can occur while in treatment. For college students whose education is disrupted by their treatment, Emery and Dillow work with registrars, financial aid and student housing to make sure their patient is supported if they have to withdraw.

    Preparing for life after high school is daunting prospect for any teen, but even more so for those dealing with a serious illness. At the “Unlock Your Future” college and career fair, Emery and Dillow ensured that their patients get the best possible start on the next chapter of their lives.

    “We try to help them achieve their goals, in spite of what they’re dealing with,” said Emery. “We want them to be successful in whatever career they choose ­— whether they are finishing treatment or dealing with a lifelong blood disorder. We make sure we meet them where they are and help them set realistic goals for the long term.”

    After a few years of hosting financial aid planning events for high school patients, Emery and Dillow realized that patients may have missed crucial college and career planning, and once they finish school and treatment, they may have no idea what to do next. The idea of hosting a college and career fair was born out of recognizing a need to have their patient’s questions answered in one place.

    “Everyone has the ability to do something,” Emery said. “We try to identify what that is and help them pick something that aligns with their interests. We have patients of all backgrounds and abilities, and we know college isn’t for everyone. If it’s not what they want to do, we talk to them about trades and certifications where they can make good salaries after six or 12 months of training.”

    Two special guests made special (virtual) appearances at the fair. Former UK football player Josh Pascal and Eastern Kentucky University men’s basketball coach A.W. Hamilton, both cancer survivors, popped in to deliver messages of encouragement to those in attendance. A representative from Kentucky Higher Education Authority was on hand to answer questions about financial aid and to talk about scholarship opportunities available to cancer patients, patients with chronic medical conditions and even siblings of patients.

    “It was so enjoyable to meet with so many amazing students from the surrounding Central Kentucky region who are interested in possibly becoming a Wildcat,” said Liz Matherly, assistant director of admissions for recruitment at UK. “This fair was unique in that many of these prospective students are familiar with UK from their connection to UK HealthCare, so it was exciting to share with them about the university side of UK. I know these students will succeed regardless of where they land, though we hope they continue to call UK home and discover what is wildly possible as a student.”

    The event was funded by the Reagan Faith Warren Memorial Fund in honor of a patient who passed away in 2016. Dinner and dessert were donated by Chuy’s and Nothing Bundt Cake. Attendees received a backpack full of swag and prizes were raffled off.

    “We had families drive in from all over the state,” said Emery. “Clearly this a worthwhile experience for them. One mom said it was a great opportunity, and that they could really start making plans for the future.”

    “This is the kind of forward-thinking programming that we do to help our patients and families in a holistic way,” said John D’Orazio, M.D., division chief of pediatric hematology and oncology. “I’m so grateful for the team we have.”

    Emery and Dillow are already planning next year’s fair — more colleges, more trades and more patients. Those patients, who probably for the first time in a long time, can plan for a future they weren’t sure they were going to have.

    “Let’s help them see a future and success,” said Emery. “And experience success so they can live the life they want to live.”

    UK HealthCare is the hospitals and clinics of the University of Kentucky. But it is so much more. It is more than 10,000 dedicated health care professionals committed to providing advanced subspecialty care for the most critically injured and ill patients from the Commonwealth and beyond. It also is the home of the state’s only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center, a Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit that cares for the tiniest and sickest newborns, the region’s only Level 1 trauma center and Kentucky’s top hospital ranked by U.S. News & World Report.  

    As an academic research institution, we are continuously pursuing the next generation of cures, treatments, protocols and policies. Our discoveries have the potential to change what’s medically possible within our lifetimes. Our educators and thought leaders are transforming the health care landscape as our six health professions colleges teach the next generation of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals, spreading the highest standards of care. UK HealthCare is the power of advanced medicine committed to creating a healthier Kentucky, now and for generations to come. 

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  • Antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem. Learn all about it in the Drug Resistance channel.

    Antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem. Learn all about it in the Drug Resistance channel.

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    Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridioides difficile, Candida auris, Drug-resistant Shigella. These bacteria not only have difficult names to pronounce, but they are also difficult to fight off.  These bacteria may infect humans and animals, and the infections they cause are harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat. According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance leads to higher medical costs, prolonged hospital stays, and increased mortality. It kills at least 1.27 million people worldwide and they are associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019, according to the CDC. In the U.S., more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year. Careful prescribing of antibiotics will minimize the development of more antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Staying informed is another way to fight these dangerous “superbugs.” Below are some of the latest news updates on the topic of Drug Resistance.

    Scientists make critical progress toward preventing C. diff infections (embargoed until 26-Mar-2023 5:00 PM EDT)

    Resistant bacteria are a global problem. Now researchers may have found the solution

    Potential Treatment Target for Drug-Resistant Epilepsy Identified

    Brazilian researchers investigate diversity of E. coli bacteria in hospitalized patients

    A Quick New Way to Screen Virus Proteins for Antibiotic Properties

    New Class of Drugs Could Prevent Resistant COVID-19 Variants

    The world’s first mRNA vaccine for deadly bacteria

    From anti-antibiotics to extinction therapy: how evolutionary thinking can transform medicine

    St. Jude approach prevents drug resistance and toxicity

    Restricting antibiotics for livestock could limit spread of antibiotic-resistant infections in people

    Resistance Is Futile

    Bacteria communicate like us – and we could use this to help address antibiotic resistance

    Study reveals how drug resistant bacteria secrete toxins, suggesting targets to reduce virulence

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