CHILDREN'S HEALTH

Dental Health

This September, New York will join seven other states and the District of Columbia in trying to ensure that children who are entering selected grades have good oral health. Under recently passed legislation (A00581), local school authorities in New York will ask parents to have their children's oral health examined. The dentist will provide "dental health certificates" that will describe the state of the student's oral health and will certify whether the child is healthy enough to attend public schools, according to the Associated Press. There are no penalties for parents who don't send in the certificates. Parents will be given lists of dentists who will provide their services for reduced or no costs, and the certificates will be requested for children who are entering the second, fourth, seventh and tenth grades.

Cancer and Kids

Children living in the Northeast have the highest cancer rates of any region in the United States, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cancer rates among children were lowest in the South, and rates were nearly identical in the Midwest and West. The study also found that leukemia is the most common childhood cancer; white children have the highest incidence of any race; and boys are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than girls. Experts were at a loss to explain the regional differences in cancer rates. The South's low rates might reflect under-reporting there and over-reporting in other regions, Dr. Rafael Ducos of the Ochsner Medical Center told the Associated Press. Cancer is the No. 1 cause of disease-related cause of death among children, affecting about 166 out of every million youngsters. The findings were reported in the American Academy of Pediatrics' journal Pediatrics.

PUBLIC HEALTH

Anti-Smoking Post-cards

Direct-mail can help persuade smokers to call smoking cessation quit lines, according to a study conducted by the Roswell Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Researchers mailed postcards promoting a 1-800 number for smoking cessation advice, as well as an offer of starter kits of nicotine patches, to the homes of nearly 77,600 smokers. In the 15-day period following the mailing, call volume rose by 36 percent, “The positive results, albeit modest, are certainly suggestive of direct mailings’ value,” Lirio Covey, director of the smoking cessation program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute told the Health Behavior News Service. According to the authors, the study's response rate is consistent with response rates for direct-mail promotions of commercial products.

Quality of Care for Public Employee Health Plans

On June 30, the Brookings Institution and the National Academy for State Health Policy will hold the first of three web-assisted conferences on influencing the behaviors and practices of providers and insurers. NCSL is on the advisory group for this project.

The first web conference will look at Public Employee Health Plan initiatives in Oregon and Minnesota. The states are seeking improvements in care quality by influencing incentives for health plans and providers.

The Program: Aligning Incentives for Quality with Insurers and Providers
Date: June 30, 2008
Time: 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (Noon Central; 11:00 a.m. Mountain; and 10:00 a.m. Pacific.) This program will last for 1 hour and 45 minutes. To learn more, please go to http://www.nashp.org/ or email NASHP's Carrie Hanlon at chanlon@nashp.org.