Tag: kids health

Warning issued over spike in hand, foot and mouth disease in Prince George’s schools – WTOP News

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A warning has gone out to parents of Prince George’s County Public School students about a spike in hand, foot, and mouth disease. So far students in more than 40 schools have reported cases of the virus, impacting students from preschool to high school, since the school year began in late August.

A warning has gone out to parents of Prince George’s County Public Schools students about a spike in hand, foot and mouth disease. So far students in more than 40 schools have reported cases of the virus, impacting students from preschool to high school, since the school year began in late August.

“It is a communicable disease,” said Dr. Traci Jones, who is the supervisor for the Office of School Health for Prince George’s County Public Schools. “It is not a life-threatening communicable disease, but it is a communicable disease that is easily transmitted.”

She said kids should be properly washing their hands and staying home if they have symptoms, such as fever or open blisters.

The school system said the very early symptoms are similar to that of a cold: fever, lack of appetite, a sore throat and the other signs of a cold. Those appear about one to two days before blisters appear on the palms and feet, and sores develop in the mouth.

“You can spread it and have it for up to a week, and then usually one to two days before the blisters come, that’s when you get your most infectious,” Jones said. “But you don’t know that you’re infectious at the time, because you feel perfectly fine.”

That’s why she repeatedly stressed the need for parents and kids to wash their hands.

“One of the things I see people do now is they’re wearing gloves all the time, trying not to get it,” she said. “But if you come in contact with it and it’s on your gloves, all you’re going to do is spread it to others. So that is not an answer — to put gloves on — but hand washing is a big way of curtailing it.”

Jones also asked parents to thoroughly and repeatedly wipe down toys and other things that kids might put their hands or mouths on.

“Schools are increasing our cleaning protocols so that we can help curtail the spread of it. We have crews coming in after hours to clean,” she said. “We have instructed our cleaning crews to — what they would normally wait until at the end of the day to clean — do it twice a day in our attempts to curtail it as much as possible. We’re also going to start increasing hand washing for our students, making sure that’s done more frequently.”

Any child who does get the virus is being told to stay home until they’ve been fever free for 24 hours and all blisters on their hands have crusted over. Mouth sores that can cause a child to drool also need to be closed up.

“Our goal is to try to prevent the spread of this as much as possible,” said Jones.

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John Domen

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October 24, 2025
TikTok is designed to be addictive to kids and causes them harm, US states’ lawsuits say – WTOP News

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More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the popular short-form video app is harming youth mental health by designing its platform to be addictive to kids.

FILE – The TikTok logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., March 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)(AP/Damian Dovarganes)

More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, saying that the popular short-form video app is designed to be addictive to kids and harms their mental health.

The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.

At the heart of each lawsuit is the TikTok algorithm, which powers what users see on the platform by populating the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits note TikTok design features that they say addict children to the platform, such as the ability to scroll endlessly through content, push notifications that come with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that create unattainable appearances for users.

“They’ve chosen profit over the health and safety, well-being and future of our children,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference in San Francisco. “And that is not something we can accept. So we’ve sued.”

The latest lawsuits come nearly a year after dozens of states sued Instagram parent Meta Platforms Inc. in state and federal courts for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing addictive features that keep kids hooked on their platforms.

Keeping people on the platform is “how they generate massive ad revenue,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in an interview. “But unfortunately, that’s also how they generate adverse mental health impacts on the users.”

The legal challenges, which also include Google’s YouTube, are part of a growing reckoning against social media companies and their effects on young people’s lives. In some cases, the challenges have been coordinated in a way that resembles how states previously organized against the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

TikTok, though, is facing an even bigger obstacle, as its very existence in the U.S. is in question. Under a federal law that took effect earlier this year, TikTok could be banned from the U.S. by mid-January if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell the platform by then. Both TikTok and ByteDance are challenging the law at an appeals court in Washington. A panel of three judges heard oral arguments in the case last month and are expected to issue a ruling, which could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its filings Tuesday, the District of Columbia called the algorithm “dopamine-inducing,” and said it was created to be intentionally addictive so the company could trap many young users into excessive use and keep them on its app for hours on end. TikTok does this despite knowing that these behaviors will lead to profound psychological and physiological harms, such as anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and other long-lasting problems, the district said.

TikTok is disappointed that the lawsuits were filed after the company had been working with the attorneys general for two years on addressing to the issues, a spokesman said.

“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” the TikTok spokesman. Alex Haurek, said. “We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product.”

The social media company does not allow children under 13 to sign up for its main service and restricts some content for everyone under 18. But Washington and several other states said in their filings that children can easily bypass those restrictions, allowing them to access the service adults use despite the company’s claims that its platform is safe for children.

The District of Columbia alleges TikTok is operating as an “unlicensed virtual economy” by allowing people to purchase TikTok Coins – a virtual currency within the platform – and send “Gifts” to streamers on TikTok LIVE who can cash it out for real money. TikTok takes a 50% commission on these financial transactions but hasn’t registered as a money transmitter with the U.S. Treasury Department or authorities in the district, according to the complaint.

Officials say teens are frequently exploited for sexually explicit content through TikTok’s LIVE streaming feature, which has allowed the app to operate essentially as a “virtual strip club” without any age restrictions. They say the cut the company gets from the financial transactions allows it to profit from exploitation.

The 14 attorneys general say the goal of their lawsuits is to stop TikTok from using these features, impose financial penalties for their alleged illegal practices and collect damages for users that have been harmed.

The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

High school students who frequently use social media more commonly have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, according to a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted last year in which about 20,000 teenagers participated.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok, alleging the company was sharing and selling minors’ personal information in violation of a new state law that prohibits these practices. TikTok, which disputes the allegations, is also fighting against a similar data-oriented federal lawsuit filed in August by the Department of Justice.

Several Republican-led states, including Nebraska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Kansas, Iowa and Arkansas, also previously sued the company, some unsuccessfully, over allegations it is harming children’s mental health, exposing them to “inappropriate” content or allowing young people to be sexually exploited on its platform.

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Associated Press writers from around the U.S. contributed to this story.

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© 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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WTOP Staff

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October 8, 2024
Pediatric Mental Health Tops 2023 List of Safety Concerns

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March 15, 2023 – The pediatric mental health crisis, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, is the top patient safety concern of 2023, according to a new report from a top U.S. patient safety and research firm.

“Even before COVID-19, the impact of social media, gun violence, and other socioeconomic factors were causing elevated rates of depression and anxiety in children,” Marcus Schabacker, MD, PhD, president and CEO of the research group ECRI, said in a news release. “The challenges caused by the pandemic turned a bad situation into a crisis. We’re approaching a national health emergency.”

According to a study in JAMA Pediatrics, rates of anxiety and depression in children ages 3 to 17 increased by 29% and 27%, respectively, from 2016 to 2020. The average number of weekly visits to emergency departments for adolescents’ suspected suicide attempts was 39% higher in winter 2021 than in winter 2020, the CDC has documented. And a 2021 CDC survey of U.S. high school students found 30% of girls said they’d seriously considered attempting suicide, which was double the rate among boys and up almost 60% from a decade ago. Almost half of LGBTQ students said they’d considered suicide.

ECRI, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness in health care, made several recommendations to address the pediatric mental health crisis. Among other things, ECRI’s experts suggested performing universal child mental health screenings during every office and hospital visit. In addition, they recommended that primary care providers make “warm handoffs” of patients and families to therapists whom they trusted.

In an interview, Schabacker said that it’s not enough for a primary care provider to simply tell a child’s parents to pick a therapist from an insurance list and make an appointment. The clinician should refer the patient to a mental health professional that they are familiar with, whether that be a therapist in private practice or one employed by a school or a church. In addition, he said, the practitioner should make sure that the therapist has the right information about the patient and knows why they were referred.

Doctors should also be made aware of the extent of the crisis and the long-term effects of mental health conditions that go untreated, Schabacker said. And they should bear in mind that children who are LGBTQ, minority, and/or socially disadvantaged have a far higher risk of a severe mental crisis than heterosexual white children do.

How Staff Shortages Impact Safety

Since the start of the pandemic, staff shortages in hospitals and doctors’ offices have affected several of the top 10 safety issues, according to ECRI. Staffing shortages, in fact, was the top safety concern in ECRI’s 2022 report. Among other things, these shortages have played a role in the number two safety concern this year: “Physical and verbal violence against health care staff.”

If an emergency room is understaffed, for example, it can take a long time for a patient to be seen, and some patients or their family members might become frustrated and angry. They might then confront an ER nurse.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in violence against nurses,” Schabacker said. When nurses and doctors are overworked because of staff shortages, they might not have the patience to calm people down and de-escalate situations.

Another result of staff shortages is that some health care professionals may be “expected to work in areas outside their scope of practice and competencies” (item number 4 on the list). This can lead to less effective care, Schabacker said.

“Staffing shortages directly influence clinical staff assignments, and gaps need to be filled,” he said. “And when you’re constantly on the run, constantly stressed, constantly at your limit, it’s much more likely that you will miss things.”

Fallout of Dobbs Decision

Another example of how changes in society affect health care is the number three concern on ECRI’s list: “Clinician needs in times of uncertainty surrounding maternal-fetal medicine.”

This refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and turned the issue of abortion’s legality back to the states.

Explaining how this change affects patient safety, the ECRI report says, “Uncertainty has now arisen in many states regarding which reproductive services may be provided and when. This uncertainty can lead to refusals of or delays in care that ultimately may not be considered to violate the law. Although some states with abortion bans allow abortions to save the life of or prevent harm to the pregnant patient, there is often little guidance on where the line is. If clinicians wait too long, patients may suffer serious harm.”

Obviously, health care providers can’t change the law, but Schabacker said health care organizations are obligated to tell doctors exactly what the law requires.

“If a woman experiences serious health events with her pregnancy, and the physician is unclear about what he or she is allowed to do in those situations, because of the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court decision, that causes risk and will lead to safety events and harm to the mothers,” he said.

Health care leaders need to be proactive and provide clear guidance about what is and isn’t allowed.

Erroneous Medication Lists

ECRI also calls out “medication errors resulting from inaccurate patient medication lists.” The report notes that “inconsistent knowledge and record keeping about medications cause up to 50% of medication errors in hospitals and up to 20% of adverse drug events.”

While these medication documentation errors occurred in hospitals, Schabacker said, medication lists in ambulatory care may contain even more mistakes. “A study conducted in patient homes prior to a doctor’s visit discovered that medication discrepancies ranged from 14% to 98%,” he said.

The most frequent examples are omitting drugs from the medication list or including discontinued medications.

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March 15, 2023