Category Archives: Education

Teens and tanning dangers

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As many families prepare to go off on mid-winter getaways or spring break to warm and sunny destinations, it’s important for parents to talk with teens about the dangers of tanning.

A suntan today can cause very serious skin problems tomorrow. Many teens think tanning in a booth or bed is not harmful, but this is not true. Ultraviolet lights have the same damaging effects as the sun.

Explain to your teen that all tanning harms the skin, causing visible and invisible damage. Visible damage, appears within a few hours after exposure, and includes suntan and sunburn. Invisible damage, such as premature aging, wrinkles, sun spots and skin cancer, may develop years later. …Continue reading →

Safe Kids and firefighters deliver fire prevention – and pizza

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Don’t be alarmed if when you’re home next Thursday evening, Oct. 22, you hear the blare of fire truck sirens and see flashing red lights in your neighborhood. Firefighters may be responding to a call – or they may be delivering a pizza!

That’s because local fire fighters, pizza restaurants, Safe Kids Southeast Wisconsin Coalition, Safe Kids Wisconsin Coalition and State Farm Insurance are teaming up for the eighth annual “Delivering Fire Prevention” event. It’s a program designed to bring fire prevention education to local families in a fun and original way.

To find out if your community is participating, check out BlueKids.org/SafeKidsWI. If the fire department delivers your pizza and you have working smoke detectors, you’ll get a free pizza! If you have a smoke detector that isn’t working you will receive a free smoke detector. We even have a limited number of carbon monoxide detectors to give away. Everyone will receive fire prevention education materials from Safe Kids and a great experience.

…Continue reading →

Walk This Way

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“Walk This Way”… no, I’m not referring to the song by Aerosmith, although it is a great song! I’m talking about Safe Kids Southeast Wisconsin Coalition’s Walk This Way program, which is part of  International Walk Your Child to School Day. The first Wednesday in October, boys, girls, their parents, teachers and others around the world make a special date to walk to school.

This program began back in the ‘90’s for several reasons: to encourage physical activity in children, to raise environmental concerns – and my primary focus – to raise an awareness about how “walkable” a community is.

On the local level, Safe Kids Southeast Wisconsin’s program goes into schools providing classroom education about pedestrian safety. Information goes home asking parents and caregivers to walk with their children to school on this special day to help bring awareness to the community about pedestrian safety issues. Pedestrian injury is the second leading cause of injury-related death in the United States for children ages 5-14. Six hundred kids die every year.

For more information about how to walk with a participating school on International Walk Your Child to School Day, Wednesday, Oct. 7, or to find out how to get your school involved for 2010, call (414) 390-2178 or e-mail Lisa Klindt Simpson at lklindtsimpson@chw.org.

New super heroes teach germ fighting to kids

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Children’s Hospital today unveiled a new team of superheroes. The “Children’s Flu Fighters” are eager to spread their germ-fighting messages to kids everywhere. Missy Clean, Captain Cough, Super Sneeze and R & R Kid teach kids four basic ways to prevent the spread of cold and flu viruses:Flu Fighters

  1. Wash your hands.
  2. Cover your cough.
  3. Sneeze in your sleeve.
  4. Take the day off.

The Flu Fighters were developed as a fun and interactive way to teach kids about staying healthy. Over the coming weeks, Children’s Hospital and Children’s Health Education Center will be reaching out to educators, parents, caregivers and children of all ages on the importance of practicing healthy habits this cold and flu season.

Help us spread the word about not spreading …Continue reading →

Back-to-school checklist: school supplies, clothes, sleep!

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School will be starting soon. It’s time to help get your kids on a healthy back to school sleep schedule.

Kids need more sleep than adults. Children ages 6 to 12 years old need 10 to 11 hours of sleep at night. Teenagers need at least nine hours of sleep.

It’s important to get enough sleep because chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to poor school performance, behavioral, developmental and mood problems, weight gain and obesity. Drowsy teens who get behind the wheel of a car can cause a deadly accident.

Here’s a sleep checklist to start working on now:

…Continue reading →

Take your kids to Safeville

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Hi I’m Gus, and I’d like to take you on a tour of Safeville. Safeville is a town dedicated to poison prevention. My human friends at Children’s Health Education Center and Wisconsin Poison Center teamed up to create fun and interactive games for children ages 3-7 to teach them how to stay safe if they come across a poison.

There is a lot to learn in Safeville. Before I flew around Safeville, I didn’t know that more than 1/2 of poison exposures occur in children 5 years or younger. I knew my bird friends and I get upset stomachs after eating anything but berries, but I didn’t know poisons make so many children sick and that this could be prevented.

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E-learning engages, enriches

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A few years ago, Children’s Health Education Center launched an e-learning program.  E-learning health education programs may have seemed pretty far “outside of the box” for some, and CHEC was a bit ahead of the curve. With a great amount of passion, persistence and creativity by CHEC’s e-learning team, I am thrilled to announce that CHEC BlueKids e-learning programs have reached nearly 13,000 students in the 2008-2009 school-year – that’s triple what we reached the year before. The game-based e-learning …Continue reading →

Milwaukee kids focus on the roots of violence to ‘Stay Alive’

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Sixth graders in Milwaukee Public Schools are learning about interpersonal violence in a new way, thanks to Milwaukee firefighters, paramedics and community leaders. Project Ujima, a program of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, is partnering with these community groups to facilitate classroom discussions with young people about violence through a new program, “Staying Alive.”

To date, we’re really proud to say that “Staying Alive” has reached more than 500 students, with the goal of having all MPS sixth graders experience the program within the next two years. The “team” comprised of two firefighters and two Project Ujima staff visits school classrooms and talks to students about the roots of violence, strategies for avoiding violence, anger triggers and how to stay safe. Most effective are simulated activities like utilizing pulse sticks that show the kids their anger. The pulse sticks help students understand their anger triggers an actual physiological response. They also learn ways to calm themselves down when their anger has been triggered, and they can see the difference for themselves as they calm down. Role-playing with students illustrates real life situations in which they may find themselves, and it teaches them how to respond with out resorting to violence. …Continue reading →

Some tests are not for schools

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Yesterday, an editorial letter I submitted, Don’t Test for Drugs at School, was published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I wanted to share the reasons why, as a pediatrician who specializes in adolescent health, I feel that random drug testing of teenagers in schools is unfounded.

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