Doctor Says Kids Suffer More From Gulf Oil Spill

*** Check out the long term impact this BP oil spill has on America's children in the Gulf region.




BP oil spill at sunset


From Denny: Dr. Irwin Redlener, of the Children's Health Fund, talks about the psychological impact of this oil spill upon children. A study from Columbia University states that children from the Gulf coast region are twice as likely to experience mental and physical problems than other children in the nation. Because of recent events, including the BP oil spill, these children require long term care.

Since the beginning of the BP Gulf oil spill, parents have reported their children have developed new rashes and breathing difficulties since the oil spill began.

www.FreeClinics.US is wanting to sponsor a free clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana to help address the many health needs of local residents because of this oil spill. They are still far short of the necessary funding to conduct the two day clinic on 31 August to 1 September. It seems that the much trumpeted new health care law has yet to reach down to regular people to make much of a positive difference - at least in the Gulf region.

Those free clinics donations have sponsored across America for a mere $2 million have helped over 9,000 people who could not afford health care. They prevented seven suicides, did three open-heart surgeries and helped a man who had been misdiagnosed with HIV to find out to his much relief that he did not have the disease. Activated were an astounding 8,500 volunteers.

Dr. Redlener spells out the five factors of what Gulf coast residents are dealing with: a slow economic recovery, previous trauma from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, looming hurricanes currently in the Gulf region, 25 percent of stressed out families are discussing a mass exodus out of Louisiana to never return, and now psychological and physical problems brought on by the BP oil spill. They have a fear their government will abandon them again. And it sure looks like it while the White House and BP are tripping all over themselves to wrap up this oil spill and declare it "mission accomplished."

Perhaps this long term care project for America's Gulf coast children would be a good project for First Lady Michelle Obama to champion. She's already begun dealing with obesity in America's children. How about making sure these Gulf coast kids get the long term help they need?

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Good News: Child Abuse Drops Dramatically

From Denny: This is good news! A 38% drop in sexually abused children occurred from a high of 217,700 in 1993 - dropping down to 135,300 in 2006. What about physical abuse during this period? Dropped by 15%. What about emotional abuse during this period? Dropped by 27%.

Experts in the area of child abuse are heralding this finding as proof that public awareness campaigns have made great headway along with judicial crackdowns.

When you combine all the areas of abuse - physical, emotional and sexual - it averages out to being down by 26% since 1993. In this study there were 553,000 children studied as opposed to 743,200 children studied in 1993.

This is a 455-page government mandated study called the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect is conducted periodically by the Department of Health and Human Services.

What is so encouraging is that this is the first time there has been such a dramatic decrease over a long period of study since we began collecting data. "It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it's a problem that is amenable to solutions," said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse. "It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it's a problem that is amenable to solutions."

Where did they collect this much information? The detailed data was produced by 10,700 "sentinels" - child welfare workers, police officers, teachers, health care professionals and day care workers - that helped create national estimates.

"There's much more public awareness and public intolerance around child abuse now," said Linda Spears who is the Child Welfare League of America's Vice President for public policy. "It was a hidden concern before — people were afraid to talk about it if it was in their family." Spears also commented there is now an abundance of programs to help abusers overcome their destructive behavior.

Professor Finkelhor, who has also conducted similar research and found a drop in abuse rates, believes the study depicts "real, substantial declines." Nor can this decrease be attributed to changing the definition of abuse.

Finkelhor speculated there may be several reasons such as in the 1990s more people were deployed in child protection services and the criminal justice system strongly focused its efforts on more arrests and prison sentences for abusers. Since then more child abusers had available to them medications to help them cope, therefore preventing molesting or mistreating a child.

"There's also been a general change in perceptions and norms about what one can get away with, so much more publicity about these things," he said.




Socio-economic factors were considered. As expected from previous studies, poverty played a starring role as three times more likely for children to be abused than other children. The rates in African-American households were also much higher than in Hispanic and Caucasian homes.

They even took a look at the family structure. It's a bit chilling about what was found here: a single parent, with a live-in partner, might abuse children at 10 times the rate of a two parent household.

The main author of the study is Andrea Sedlak, Westat, Inc. in Maryland. She was concerned over their finding that more than half of the child maltreatment incidents are not actually investigated by a child-protection agency. "Is the system still so strapped?" she asked. "There's still a lot of material here saying the system has a long way to go."

Of course, this study is now almost four years old upon its release this week. Since 2006, this country has sunk down into a deep recession or a depression with over 20% of America out of work like in the 1930s. With all the job loss and family financial pressures and home foreclosures there have been reports of domestic violence on the rise.

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