- The ARC - California Edition -

Food For Preventive Thought

SHOPPING CARTS – During 1996 nationwide, there were over 16,000 kids under age 5 that fell from shopping carts. Half of them suffered a serious head injury. Even with this growing problem staring us in the face, very few states currently are requiring new shopping carts to be built with safety straps – much less retrofitting existing carts.

Head injury for anyone is serious stuff. Become a prevention advocate!. Request your store manager to install safety straps on his shopping carts. Then, use this prevention device for your child, or grandchild.

LIST SERVE REGARDING DD WOMEN'S HEALTH -- A researcher from the Aging Studies Department of the University of Illinois at Chicago has announced the establishment of an electronic discussion group (known as a listserv) on the subject of Women's Health and Aging with Developmental Disabilities.

The listserv is designed to be an open forum for older women with developmental disabilities, their families, researchers, clinicians, students, etc., focusing on health promotion and health-related issues. This forum will have a particular emphasis on aging with a developmental disability, including mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and Down syndrome.

In Internet lingo, a listserv is a method for sending information to a select group of persons who have elected to sign up and participate. The purpose is to share information about the preestablished subject. In order to learn more, check the list owner's (Allison A. Brown) home page which lists the potential topics for discussion. The URL address for her home page is: http://www.uic.edu/~lisab/homepage.htm If you are interested in learning more about this forum, contact Allison A. Brown via email at <lisab@uic.edu> or phone: (312) 413-1588.

1996 IMMUNIZATION GOALS REACHED — The federal goals for 1996 were to increase vaccination coverage levels of the most critical doses of vaccine to at least 90 percent among 2-year-old children and eliminate or reduce vaccine preventable diseases.

According to CDC, 95 percent of 2-year-olds received three doses of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine (DTP); 91 percent received three doses of polio vaccine; 92 percent received three doses of Haemophilus influenzae type b (causes a form of meningitis) vaccine; and 91 percent received a measles-containing vaccine.

The overall national immunization coverage level for the most commonly used combined series, which includes 4 doses of DTP, 3 doses of polio and a measles-containing vaccine, increased to 78 percent in 1996, the highest national level ever reported in the United States for preschool children.

In 1996, three diseases reached the elimination targets; there were no reported cases of tetanus among children under 15 years of age or of poliomyelitis due to wild polio virus and, with 725 cases of mumps in 1996, surpassed by more than half the reduction goal set for mumps of 1,600. Reported levels of disease were at or near record lows and close to the 1996 elimination targets for diphtheria (4 cases), Haemophilus influenzae invasive disease among children under 5 years of age (165 cases), rubella (196 cases) and measles (443 cases).

(Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, July 25, 1997)