Rivals cost of other high profile public health problems

ATLANTA, Feb. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect) is approximately $124 billion, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in Child Abuse and Neglect , The International Journal.

This study looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases, 1,740 fatal and 579,000 non-fatal, for a 12-month period. The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions, such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at $159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000.  The costs of each death due to child maltreatment are even higher.

“No child should ever be the victim of abuse or neglect – nor do they have to be.  The human and financial costs can be prevented through prevention of child maltreatment,” said Linda C. Degutis, Dr.P.H., M.S.N., director of CDC?s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity.  This CDC study found these negative effects over a survivor’s lifetime generate many costs that impact the nation’s health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems. 

Key findings:

• The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:
  • $32,648 in childhood health care costs
  • $10,530 in adult medical costs
  • $144,360 in productivity losses
  • $7,728 in child welfare costs
  • $6,747 in criminal justice costs
  • $7,999 in special education costs
• The estimated average lifetime cost per death includes:
  • $14,100 in medical costs
  • $1,258,800 in productivity losses

Child maltreatment can also be linked to many emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. Associated emotional and behavioral problems include aggression, conduct disorder, delinquency, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Past research suggests that child maltreatment is a complicated problem, and so its solutions cannot be simple. An individual parent or caregiver’s behavior is influenced by a range inter-related factors such as how they were raised, their parenting skills, the level of stress in their life, and the living conditions in their community.  Because of this complexity, it is critical to invest in effective strategies that touch on all sectors of society.  

“Federal, state, and local public health agencies as well as policymakers must advance the awareness of the lifetime economic impact of child maltreatment and take immediate action with the same momentum and intensity dedicated to other high profile public health problems –in order to save lives, protect the public’s health, and save money,” said Dr. Degutis.

Several programs have demonstrated reductions in child maltreatment and have great potential to reduce the human and economic toll on our society.  Several examples of effective programs include:

• Nurse–Family Partnership, an evidence-based community health program. Partners a registered nurse with a first-time mother during pregnancy and continues through the child’s second birthday.   http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/
• Early Start, provides coordinated, family-centered system of services:  http://www.dds.ca.gov/earlystart/ California’s response to federal legislation providing early intervention services to infant and toddlers with disabilities and their families.
• Triple P, a multilevel parenting and family support system: http://www.triplep-america.com/ Aims to prevent severe emotional and behavioral disturbances in children by promoting positive and nurturing relationships between parent and child.

The article, “The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention,” is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/aip/01452134.

CDC’s Injury Center works to prevent injuries and violence and their adverse health consequences.  For more information on public health child maltreatment prevention activities and research, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/childmaltreatment.

If you know or suspect a child is being abused, contact the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD or visit the Childhelp website.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

SOURCE Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Don’t miss this opportunity!  Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Director, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, will participate in a live webcast on The Toxic Stress of Early Childhood Adversity: Rethinking Health and Education Policy.

The webcast will be moderated by Abigail Trafford, Author and Former Health Editor of The Washington Post, and also will feature Robert Block, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other national experts.

Date: Tuesday, February 7�
Time: 3 to 4 p.m. ET 

Watch at  www.ForumHSPH.org and share the link with your colleagues.

Nipping the problem of childhood obesity in the bud, by targeting children aged from birth to five years: That’s the strategy of Shape NC: Healthy Starts for Young Children. The program began last year and is now expanding to 10 more communities in North Carolina, a state that has the 11th-highest childhood obesity rate in the country. The program teaches early childhood educators how to effectively engage young children in physical activity. Communities are also assisted in creating nutrition programs, vegetable gardens and family physical activities.

Katherine Davis is director of The Growing Place child care center in Asheboro. Her center has had Shape NC in place since May.

“The transition’s been great. The children aren’t complaining, ‘I don’t want this, this isn’t something I like.’ They’re just like, ‘Wow, this is good.’”

Shape NC is administered by the North Carolina Partnership for Children, the organization that also oversees Smart Start, and is supported by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. A $3 million investment from the Blue Cross Foundation funds three phases of the Shape NC program.

Davis says the children she cares for who are are considered obese are enthusiastic about the change, and learning a better way to eat and stay healthy.

“With the small population that I do have, the parents are really on board with this, and I think making the change here has also made a change at home.”

By choosing to target the youngest of our population, Shape NC and Smart Start hope to create healthy habits for life, based on numerous studies that indicate children from birth to age five are in a critical development stage. Some 600 children benefited from the first expansion of Shape NC last year.

Shape NC is expanding to Alamance, Alexander, Anson, Carteret, Chatham, Iredell, McDowell, Mecklenburg, Mitchell-Yancey, and Wayne counties.
Click here to view this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/22556-1

North Carolina ranks 38th in key indicators of child health and well-being, according to data released by the Annie E Casey Foundation in its 2011 KIDS COUNT Data Book. The state fell from 37th in 2010.

The 2011 Data Book paints a picture of mixed progress for North Carolina children. In a state that consistently receives high marks as business-friendly, more children and families now face greater risk of economic insecurity as a result the recession. Indicators of well-being, which typically lag behind economic indicators, have yet to capture the full impact of the recession, and may not do so for a number of years.

Teen birth rate declines.
The number of births to teens ages 15 to 19 declined 17 percent since 2000. In 2008, there were 49 births per 1,000 teens in North Carolina.

Share of teens not in school and not high school graduates improves.
Just five years ago, North Carolina ranked 37th in the nation for the number of teens ages 16 to 19 who are not in school and not high school graduates, today that rank has improved to 29th. The share of teens not in school and not high school graduates has declined by more than half-from 16 to 7 percent-between 2000 and 2009.

Rate of low birthweight births continues to stall.
The percent of newborns weighing less than 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds) has been largely unchanged for much of the past decade. In 2008, low birthweight infants accounted for 9.1 percent of North Carolina births.

Child poverty reaches highest level in a decade.
The number of children living in families earning less than the federal poverty line, $22,050 for a family of four in 2009, grew 21 percent since 2000 to 505,000 in 2009.

“While important gains have been made for North Carolina’s children, clear challenges still exist,” said Laila Bell, Director of Research and Data at Action for Children North Carolina, home of the North Carolina KIDS COUNT project. “In 2009, half a million children in North Carolina lived in poverty-a particularly sobering statistic since we know that poverty affects children’s academic, health and future labor market outcomes.”

According to data in the 22nd annual KIDS COUNT Data Book, the economic and social gains for children that occurred across the 1990s stalled, even before the economic downturn began. This year’s Data Book reports an eighteen percent increase in the U.S. child poverty rate between 2000 and 2009. This increase means that 2.5 million more American children are living below the federal poverty line ($21,756 for a family of two adults and two children), effectively wiping out the gains made on this important measure in the late 1990′s.

In an ongoing effort to track the impact of the recession, there are two new indicators in this year’s data set — the number of children impacted by foreclosure and households with at least one unemployed parent. In North Carolina 90,000, or two percent, of the state’s children were impacted by foreclosure since 2007. In 2010, an estimated 253,000, or 12 percent, of children in this state lived in households where there was at least one parent who was eligible for and or seeking employment, but was unemployed at the time the data were collected.

“Foreclosure and parental unemployment threaten the well-being of our children,” said Bell. “Evidence shows that stable, economically secure homes are critical components of child development, and are essential to children’s life success.”

Community-Level Data Available

In addition to the 10 key measures tracked in the Data Book, the KIDS COUNT Data Center provides easy, online access to the latest child well-being data on hundreds of indicators by state, county, city, and school district. It serves as a comprehensive source of information for policymakers, advocates, members of the media, and others concerned with addressing the needs of North Carolina children, families, and communities.

Visit the Data Center to download the complete Data Book, and create interactive maps and graphs, or view from your smartphone, such as the Droid, BlackBerry, or iPhone using the new mobile site launched in conjunction with this year’s Data Book.

Chubby cheeks for babies may not be so cute after all. A report released Thursday afternoon by the Institute of Medicine offers a stark reminder that obese babies often become obese adults — and a series of simple steps could help reverse the trend.

Designed to combat the “widespread belief” that childhood obesity doesn’t kick in until kindergarten, the IOM report lays out recommendations to help keep kids fit from birth to age 5. More sleep, more play time, less formula and less television top the list of ways to keep the baby fat at bay (see more of the study’s tips below).

“For too long, people didn’t worry about obesity in very young children. A big baby was supposed to be a healthy baby,” said Dr. Leann Birch, chair of the IOM’s Committee on Obesity Prevention Policies for Young Children. “But kids don’t necessarily grow out of it. They become more obese with age.”

Only recently did researchers discover that 10 percent of infants and 20 percent of preschoolers are overweight, said Birch, who also directs Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Childhood Obesity Research.

“Obesity hasn’t somehow spared our youngest,” she said.

(To continue the story and find a list of 15 Tips, visit PBS Newshour)

Smart Start and The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation have been tackling the issue of childhood obesity across the North Carolina through the Shape NC initiative. Learn more at the link.