If you’re scheduling pre-camp or summer checkups for your tweens, chances are your pediatrician is going to talk to you about the HPV vaccine.
It helps prevent certain types of cancer that are caused by the human papillomavirus, including cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile, anal, and some oral cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because HPV is spread through sexual contact, the ideal time to get the vaccine is before kids become sexually active.
Because vaccines of any nature have been the topic of much anxiety for parents, BocaParent talked to a local pediatric infectious disease specialist, Dr. Jose R. Mateo, about why we should consider this one – for girls and boys.
For him, it comes down to the severity of the disease the vaccine aims to prevent – in this case, cervical cancer, of which HPV is the main cause.
“It should be used in every adolescent because there is a lot to prevent here,” Mateo said.
Cervical cancer causes about 4,000 deaths in women each year in the United States, according to the CDC. There are about 15,000 HPV-associated cancers in the United States that may be prevented by vaccines each year in women.
Beyond that, the vaccine can also prevent some oral cancers in men – and genital warts. Mateo says billions are spent every year to treat genital warts, which can also be transmitted to babies during birth and cause serious respiratory problems.
The vaccine is underused, with about 32 percent of eligible girls getting it in 2010. Mateo attributes that to its newness and the fact that it isn’t required by schools or other organizations.
There are two HPV vaccines: Gardasil, approved in 2007, and Cervarix, approved in 2009. Mateo said there are no significant side effects with either. Gardasil protects against four strains of the virus and is the only one approved for use in boys.
Mateo said the HPV vaccine, which is not a live virus, is safe to get alongside the other immunizations required for entry into seventh-grade: Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis and Meningococcal Conjugate.
Some insurers do cover Gardasil and Cervarix.
GETTING THE HPV For girls and boys age 11-12, the CDC recommends three shots over six months.
Mateo recommends bringing the kids in well-hydrated and having them sit in the doctor’s office a few minutes after receiving any shots, to avoid any faintness.
LEARN MORE
The CDC website has more details.
Dr. Jose R. Mateo is in private practice in Boca Raton and Coral Springs and is affiliated with West Boca Medical Center. You can reach him at 561-997-7686.
Find more on medical issues from local experts on our Kids’ Health page. - CHARLENE PACENTI
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Karen Perry tells the story of losing her son to a drug overdose while he was away at college. It is a gut-wrenching thing to hear, her anguish in sharing that it all began with him smoking marijuana when he was about 15. That she and her son’s father got him into treatment, transferred him to another college, and still … a middle-of-the-night visit from the police brought the awful news.
Perry told her story to a recent gathering of parents at Spanish River High School. She is a co-founder of the nonprofit NOPE (Narcotics Overdose Prevention & Education) Task Force, which visits schools and parent groups all over Palm Beach County. Your middle- or high-school student may have seen the NOPE program in recent weeks.
As an educated parent, you may think you’ve heard it all before. But a couple of the task force’s messages were startling:
This has become the leading cause of non-natural death in Palm Beach County, with someone dying of an overdose every 28 hours.
What’s new about that? Eighty-five percent of them had more than one drug in their system. And that is a real danger for kids, who are experimenting with prescription drugs stolen from their parents – or bought from their peers.
Gary Martin, an associate dean at Lynn University and a former drug agent and homicide detective with the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, said, “The kids think they’re invincible. They think they know about drugs and what they can handle. But no one knows what will happen when they mix them,” Martin said, adding that it’s not an issue of trust, but a matter of “risk ignorance.”
Many instances can be traced back to the home, which is the main source of drugs and alcohol used by kids age 12-14. (Solution: Keep track of how much you have and lock it up; throw out what you don’t need).
In 2006, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported that a third of teens have attended parties where parents were present and alcohol was served to minors. (Remember October 2010 when two Boca Raton parties involving high-schoolers got out of control? Parents were arrested in both cases.)
It is against the law to serve alcohol to minors in your home – and opens you up to civil liability if anything goes wrong.
“You have to be the parent. You have to take control. You have to know what your kids are doing all the time,” said PBSO Capt.Jeffery Lindskoog.
The middle school years are prime for experimentation. The average age of the first use of alcohol or drugs is 13 in Palm Beach County. It used to be 11.
What to do
If you find drugs or alcohol in child’s belongings, Martin advises:
How to talk to your kids about drugs
Lynn Guelzow from The Hanley Center, a treatment facility in West Palm Beach, gave some guidance:
Guelzow said it’s also important to tell other parents when you know their child is using drugs or alcohol. They may not speak to you any more, but it’s the right thing to do.
Perry later learned that her son had a prior non-fatal overdose earlier and several people knew about it. No one told her.
To Learn More
For more information or to get help, visit NOPE’s website www.nopetaskforce.org, call 561-478-1055 or visit NOPE’s Facebook page.
- CHARLENE PACENTI
The food served in Palm Beach County school cafeterias may be healthier than you think.
Hormone-free milk. Corn on the cob and green beans fresh from a local farm. No fried food.
A documentary shown recently to a Boca Raton parent group had us wondering about what efforts the local schools are making to serve healthier food. Cafeteria Man tells the story of a Baltimore chef tasked with making over the school menus. He partnered with a local farm to supply fresh produce to the schools – for cheaper than some of the canned fruit and vegetables that were being shipped across the country. (Sadly, some of the kids had never even seen a real peach).
Farm-rich Palm Beach County seems a likely place for this idea to take root. And it has.
Jamie McCarthy, nutrition and wellness promotion specialist with the Palm Beach County School District, said its farm-to-table program has been bringing fresh green beans and mini corn on the cob to the school cafeterias since the 2008-09 school year. (See it on the menu for Fridays this month). The food comes from R.C. Hatton Farms near Belle Glade.
(The corn has been popular – except for kids with loose teeth; the green beans, not as much, McCarthy said).
This spring, the district is working to provide some fresh Florida strawberries.
And when bids go out again this year to produce providers, McCarthy hopes that local farms will be able to meet the district’s price for broccoli, yellow squash and zucchini. The district is working with Localeopia, a nonprofit that helps brings together businesses, producers and other organizations to support local product consumption.
Some other steps the district has taken over the past few years to make school meals healthier:
They use some frozen vegetables, but no canned. They use some canned fruits, in their own juices or light syrup.
Some parents dis the prepackaged peanut butter sandwiches that make up one of the daily vegetarian options. But McCarthy said those are used as a precaution to protect kids with peanut allergies. Making fresh PB&J’s in the cafeteria provides too great a risk for cross-contamination, which could be a serious health hazard to a student with a severe peanut allergy.
The district also eliminated salad bars in 2005 for health reasons.
“The main issue that we had with salad bars is safety and sanitation,” McCarthy said “They are breeding grounds for different germs.”
Instead they serve a variety of entree salads – mandarin chicken, chef’s salad, taco salad, etc., which have been popular in many schools, she said.
Most of the school food program changes required by new federal guidelines will be administrative for our schools. Some portion sizes may change for middle-schoolers. Kids will be required to take a fruit or vegetable with their lunch.
The district is also looking to make over its high school cafeterias. A pilot program at Atlantic High School turned the lunch room into more of a food court, with six different choices at six counters. As a result, more kids are buying lunch, McCarthy said.
That program may be rolled out in other schools over the next few years.
Read more
Do you know you can not only pay for your child’s meals online, but you can also see what they are buying? Go to School Cash Online. School lunch menus
The school district wellness program’s annual report
Cafeteria Man was shown as part of Sunflower Creative Art’s Share and Learn evenings. Read more about its programs for kids and parents at www.sunflowercreativearts.org.
Read all about Cafeteria Man
Do your kids eat in the cafeteria, or do you pack a lunch? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
The flu season is on its way, and local pediatricians are urging parents to take kids for a flu shot – and to get one themselves.
Dr. Andrew Reiss, who practices at Pediatric Associates and West Boca Medical Center, said the good news is that this year’s flu shot is identical to last year’s. So if your kids got one last year, they may only need one dose this year, instead of two.
Reiss recommends the flu mist over an injection if you can get it, just because it’s more comfortable for the kids. You don’t get sick from the vaccine, he said, but you can get some side effects from the mist like a runny nose and a cough two or three days later.
Palm Beach County Public Schools are not be offering the vaccine this year because of funding cuts. (Read more about that in The Palm Beach Post.)
But so far the vaccine is widely available at pediatrician’s offices and local drugstores, sometimes for free.
The flu vaccine is covered by most insurance.
“It’s all the same. It’s all very reliable,” Reiss said.
Himself a father of three – ages 7, 9 and 10, Reiss recommends that parents get the flu shot, too. Because once one person in the house gets it, “Everybody else in the house is going to get it.”
And because there are multiple strains out there, you can get it more than once. It’s typically a weeklong illness that brings a high fever, headache, sore throat, cough, congestion and body aches.
Flu season usually starts in early November. It hasn’t hit South Florida yet, but it takes a couple of weeks after the vaccine to develop immunity. The peak months for flu are usually January-March.
TIPS FOR AVOIDING THE FLU
Reiss offers some other tips for keeping the flu at bay:
TO LEARN MORE
For more on the flu vaccine, visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention online.
Get more Kids’ Health news, tips and local resources at BocaParent.com.
RSV OUTBREAK Another local health trend: We seem to be having an outbreak of RSV, which is common for South Florida in the fall, Reiss said. It’s a highly contagious virus that causes infection of the respiratory tract. Read more about the outbreak in the Sun-Sentinel. Read more about RSV and how to prevent it in BocaParent’s 3-Minute Guru.
RSV OUTBREAK
Another local health trend: We seem to be having an outbreak of RSV, which is common for South Florida in the fall, Reiss said. It’s a highly contagious virus that causes infection of the respiratory tract.
Photo courtesy Boca Raton Regional Hospital.
Whenever a baby is born at Boca Raton Regional Hospital, a lullaby plays over the intercom throughout the hospital, even in the outlying office buildings.
It’s an “aaaaaaaawwwww” moment that happens about 150 times a month.
The hospital’s Toppel Family Place is known for its mother-baby model of care, which supports keeping the two together as much as possible, under the care of a single nurse.
“We know that early bonding is really important,” said Karen Edlington, the hospital’s director of women’s & children’s services.
Even if a baby needs to spend some time in the neonatal intensive-care unit, hospital staff encourage the mother’s “kangaroo care” – holding the baby close – and breast-feeding.
The hospital offers a daily breastfeeding support group and 90 percent of patients do start breastfeeding. (A twice-a-week support group is free and open to the public, no matter where you gave birth). And the hospital calls new mothers to follow up after they have gone home.
“Early support is really important,” Edlington said.
Birth plans
Edlington said more women are looking to experience natural childbirth and a host of alternative birthing plans. Some women are choosing hynobirths, or to go through labor in a tub of water (many working through Amazing Births and Beyond).
Boca Regional also works with six midwives who practice with local obstetricians.
“We’ll support whatever kind of birth experience you want,” Edlington said. “It’s a privilege to be part of somebody’s birth.”
She is happy to conduct private tours or meet with parents-to-be to discuss birth plans.
An obstetrics-only anesthesiologist is available 24 hours a day. Two operating rooms are reserved for obstetrics. NICU
Boca Regional is certified as a Level 2 NICU, with an in-house neonatologist and nurses that are all trained to Level 3.
If babies need surgery, are born before 28 weeks gestation, or weigh less than 1,000 grams, they are likely to be transferred to specialists at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood or Miami Children’s Hospital.
Amenities
All rooms are private and decorated with homey touches – wooden headboards, armoires, nicely upholstered sofas and gliders. Some may share a bathroom if many of the rooms are occupied.
The hospital has wi-fi (and people are Skyping, Tweeting and Facebooking their births).
There’s a Daddy shower room.
Maternity patients can order food from a special menu.
There are no hard-and-fast visitation rules.
Classes
Besides breastfeeding support and child-birth classes, the hospital offers classes on infant CPR for the whole family; a class for siblings-to-be; prenatal yoga; baby signing and more.
Get descriptions of classes and more details on the hospital’s website.
To learn more
Maternity tours are 6 p.m. Wednesdays and 10 a.m. Saturdays. Call 561-955-3276 to register. The hospital is at 800 Meadows Rd. in east Boca.
Visit the hospital’s website.
