The health of American children has fallen considerably since 2007, a new study finds

Then Dr. Christopher Forrest started his career in pediatrics about 25 years ago, he says it was pretty unusual to see children come in with chronic conditions. But that has changed. Nowadays he says anecdotal, more children enter the hospital and even first -line practices with chronic diseases.

“They just seem to be sicker. And it turns out that they are,” says Forrest, A professor of pediatrics in the children’s hospital of Philadelphia.

In one New study in the diary JamaForrest and his colleagues report that since 2007 the health of American children has been considerably deteriorated in various important indicators.

They found that a US child was 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition in 2023 than a child in 2011. In particular, The Prevalence of Depression, Anxiety, Sleep Apnea and Obesity All Intreased, Did Rates of Etabioral, Behavior Development Hyperactivity Disorder.

Reports of problems such as poor sleep, limited physical activity, early menstruation and loneliness also increased.

“I think the general message is that the health of children in the United States has been decreasing almost two decades,” says Forrest. He says that the researchers have consulted eight extensive data sets, including national representative surveys and millions of electronic pediatric health files.

The researchers also looked at death rates for American babies, young children and teenagers and compared them with their peers in other countries with a high income over time. Forrest says that in the 1960s “the chance that a child in the United States would die was the same as European countries.” But that is no longer the case, he says.

“What we have found is that children in the United States from 2010 to 2023 were 80% more likely to die” than their peers in these countries, he says.

Under infants, these differences in mortality were largely powered by sudden unexpected death of children and prematurity. In older children and adolescents, the gap was fed by rifle, motor vehicle accidents and substance abuse.

“In 2020, the firearm mortality of the firearm manager caught up as the most important cause of death in American youth,” the authors write.

Dr. Frederick Rivara is one Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington. He Written an editorial that is accompanied by the new study in Jama. He says that health care coverage is an important reason why American children seem worse than their colleagues in other rich countries. He notes that the US, unlike Canada or the United Kingdom, does not offer universal coverage of health care.

“And now that is getting worse, where children are removed from Medicaid,” says Rivara, due to enormous cuts on the Medicaid program for Americans with a low income included in the tax and expenditure president Trump that was signed in the law last week.

According to the Pew Research Center, an estimated 41% of all American children were registered in Medicaid from January.

“Although the administration of the Administration America makes it healthy again, the attention of the welcome to chronic diseases and important main causes such as ultra-processed foods, it strives for other policy that will work against the health interests of children,” wrote Rivara and his co-authors. This includes enormous cuts at the Ministry of Health and Human Services, including for preventing injury Programs and the elimination of the team that led the Safe to Sleep campaign for babies, aimed at reducing incidents of sudden childhood syndrome, And initiatives that question the safety of vaccines in children.

Published by Jane Greenhalgh