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Despite reports that over 1.3 million school-age children (ages 5-18) were homeless in 2019, little is known about the effects of homelessness on their overall health and well-being. To better understand where gaps exist, a scoping review of the literature was conducted to identify studies of the physical, mental, and behavioral health risks and outcomes of school-age children experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Following the Joanna Briggs Institute framework and Preferred Reporting Items (PRISMA) guidelines, seven electronic databases were searched using key words: homelessness, children, health, and well-being. Of the 4,372 records, 23 articles met inclusion criteria. Most examined mental health and high-risk activities or behavioral risks related to school achievement. Few studies tracked the long-term health outcomes of homeless school-age children. Findings have implications for school nurses who have contact with children experiencing homelessness and are in position to intervene to prevent negative health sequelae in this vulnerable population.

Background: The majority of Spanish adults and children do not engage in enough physical activity to be beneficial for health. There is a need for objective and accurate assessment of the proportion of children meeting the physical activity recommendation for health. Assessing patterns of physical activity both between days (during weekdays and weekend days) and within days is of interest to improve our understanding of the variation in Spanish children's physical activity and to provide efficient intervention programmes., Methods: A sample of 221 children: 136 9-year-old children (68 boys and 68 girls) and 85 15-year-old children (36 girls and 49 boys) from 12 urban public schools in Madrid, Spain entered the study. The variables measured were anthropometric characteristics (height, weight, body mass index) and physical activity measured during four consecutive days using the GT1M accelerometer., Results: Younger children were more active and less sedentary than older ones during week and weekend days. Nine-year-old boys and girls achieved significantly (P < 0.05) more moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and significantly (P < 0.01) less sedentary time than older 15-year-old children. During weekdays more children achieved physical activity recommendations versus weekend days. Physical activity patterns analyses indicated that boys achieved relatively high values of MVPA from 1100 till 1300 h (school break) and from 1800 till 2000 h in comparison with the rest of the day. Girls were substantially different, with the 9-year-old girls having only two obvious peaks of weekday MVPA at lunch (1300) and after school (1900 h) while the adolescent girls had no clear peak of MVPA., Conclusions: Few children achieved the level of MVPA recommended for health; at particular risk were adolescent girls. More effort needs to be devoted to promoting appropriate opportunities for Spanish girls across the day and to promoting physical activity during weekends for all children., (© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

Children are citizens who are entitled to recognition, respect, and participation. Positioning children as citizens gives them the opportunity to play a role in solving fundamental problems and, in partnership with adults, strengthen their communities. Research on children's understanding of rights, responsibilities, and citizenship can build a platform for action. Numerous examples of projects are available in which children have been encouraged and supported to exercise their agency and put into practice the ideals of citizenship for the benefit of their communities. If children are to exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens, change must occur in both adult and child cultures.

Passive consent, which is ethically questionable, requires parents to sign and return a form if they refuse to allow their child to participate in research. Active consent requires parents to sign and return a form if they consent for their child to participate. To compare passive and active consent research projects, we evaluated 15 published examples (since 1995) of passive consent and the adjacent experimental article (active consent). Passive consent projects involved significantly higher response rates, more subjects, greater likelihood of being conducted in school rather than in clinical settings, but about the same age of participants as active consent projects. We recommend that: (a) Institutional Review Boards scrutinize all passive consent projects and consider whether the consent procedure is ethical for the research sample; (b) editors and reviewers examine all manuscripts for the consent procedure used; and (c) ethicists and researchers debate the appropriateness/ethics of passive consent.

The aim of this study was to analyze the relation between traffic intensity and traffic hazards in the local traffic environment, the parents' view of their child's traffic situation and the actions taken by the parents to cope with these hazards. 58 parents were interviewed. The traffic intensity in the vicinity of the home was estimated. 19% of the parents lived in inner city areas, 62% in suburbs and 19% in the countryside. Suburban children had a safe traffic environment. Inner city- and countryside children predominately lived in high-intensity traffic environment. Inner city- and suburb children frequently used the bike, in inner city as a tool for play and in the suburbs mainly as a means of transport. Countryside children seldom used their bicycle. In inner city areas carefulness in traffic and in the other two independence was emphasized. Only 16% reported cooperation between home and school on traffic matters. Traffic accidents were concentrated to children living in suburbs (p<0.01). 81% of accidents were reported by parents having independence as a goal for traffic training (p<0.01). The results underline that traffic accident risk is strongly contingent on the local traffic environment and informal parenteral education in traffic safety.

Background: The purpose of this educational project was to assess the effect of several interventions on the frequency of handwashing among elementary public school children., Methods: Participants in this project were first-graders and fourth-graders from jurisdictions within a mid-Atlantic metropolitan area. Phase I included a baseline assessment of bathroom cleanliness as well as adequacy of supplies for handwashing in each school. During phase 2, the frequency of handwashing before lunch or after bathroom use was monitored and recorded during a 2-month period. The schools were separated into four groups: a peer education group, a hand wipes and instructional poster group, a combination of the education and hand wipes/poster groups, and a (control) comparison school., Results: Overall, a significant increase occurred in the proportion of handwashing frequency from preintervention to postintervention for each intervention group (wipes: 0.50 vs 0.66, p = 0.03; education only: 0.64 vs 0.72, p = 0.02; and education and wipes: 0.45 vs 0.67, p = 0.03) but not in the control group (0.42 vs 0.46, p = 0.26). When the first 3 weeks and the last 3 weeks after intervention were compared, handwashing frequency remained unchanged in the wipes only group (0.66 vs 0.66, p = 0.96), decreased in the education group (0.77 vs 0.65, p = 0.006), and increased in the education and wipes group (0.58 vs 0.75, p = 0.003), as well as in the control group (0.37 vs 0.52, p = 0.01)., Conclusion: Education combined with accessible convenient hand hygiene may result in a sustainable increase in the frequency of handwashing among elementary school children.

"This chapter shows that...there are many different aspects to the cost of a child and...many different measures have been developed. The chapter...argues that theories of fertility need to specify carefully the definition of child costs and that the assumptions underlying existing measures need to be made plain.... The review is divided into three major sections: babies, childcare and children. The sources covered range from popular magazines and Mothercare catalogues to the only large-scale official [U.K.] survey of maternity and its costs, undertaken in 1946. The items covered range from the price of babies' essentials to the fees at schools...as well as the costs of maintaining a child at university.", (excerpt)

Five hundred and eleven fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students and their parents from six schools in northwest Arkansas participated in this study. Students were blocked on school and grade level, then assigned randomly by class to either the intervention Keep A Clear Mind (KACM) program or a waiting list control. KACM students received four weekly correspondence lessons designed to be completed at home with a parent. KACM students reported significantly less perceived peer use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, as well as significantly less peer pressure susceptibility to experiment with cigarettes. Mothers in the KACM program reported significantly more recent and frequent communication with their children about refusing drugs, and significantly greater discussions with their children regarding how to resist peer pressure to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Intervention program fathers reported significantly more communication with their children concerning how to resist peer pressure to drink alcohol and use tobacco, and significantly greater motivation to help their children avoid drug use. No significant differences were found between groups on student intentions to use drugs. These data suggest a print medium that emphasizes parent-child activities holds promise for accessing families and enhancing drug prevention communication.

Third and fourth grade boys (n = 422) and girls (n = 390) in four Texas elementary schools reported their participation in moderate to vigorous physical activities (MVPAs) over a 3-day period. Students were surveyed during class on successive days. On a subsample (n = 44), the agreement between reported and observed physical activities during physical education or recess was 86.3%. Running, walking fast, games and sports, and bicycling accounted for 70% of Total MVPAs. Of Total MVPAs reported, 47.0% for boys and 44.6% for girls were 10 min or longer in duration (LMVPA). The average number of LMVPAs per day was 1.7 for both boys and girls. Students reported significantly more occurrences of LMVPAs out of school than during school. Significant interaction between grade and gender indicated that third grade boys reported more Total MVPAs and LMVPAs than third grade girls, but fourth grade boys reported fewer Total MVPAs and LMVPAs than fourth grade girls reported fewer Total MVPAs and LMVPAs than fourth grade girls. During the 3-day reporting period, 12.3% of boys and 13.3% of girls reported no LMVPAs, and 35.6% of boys and girls reported fewer than one LMVPAs per day. While the majority of children reported obtaining at least some activity daily, a substantial proportion of children in this sample reported fewer than one LMVPA daily, indicating that many children may not be obtaining adequate amounts of physical activity.

Analysis of court hearings in a case to prevent a child with AIDS from attending school reveals how perceptions of risk are shaped by a range of cultural, political, and institutional factors. The many actors in this ritualized verbal combat sought to control interpretations of evidence, scientific credibility, legitimacy of decision-making procedures, and the balance of rights and responsibilities. Technocratic authority may be less important than symbolic and political issues in determining acceptability of risk.