Some of my fondest memories of growing up are of playing sports. Although I did not become a Division I college or professional athlete, the experience taught me invaluable lessons in perseverance, teamwork, and confidence. Sports wasn’t only beneficial to me. Studies have shown many attributes of youth sport, including structured and consistent physical activity and social support important to childhood development and health and perhaps lower levels of depression. What was a crucial and irreplacable childhood experience for me is unfortunately not equally accessible to all children and adolescents.
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 Jenny Sun, PhD The impact of medication use during childhood and adolescence is understudied. Children have traditionally been excluded from randomized trials largely due to ethical concerns and the challenges of obtaining consent of minors, resulting in a lack of evidence to inform treatment decision making. Unfortunately, this lack of evidence-based prescribing has immediate and potentially lifelong consequences. An estimated 200,000 children in the United States visit the emergency department each year due to an adverse drug reaction. Beyond these urgent consequences, there is emerging research that points to long term impacts, specifically raising the question: could this lack of evidence on drug safety also be related to the increasing burden of youth-onest type 2 diabetes?
Imagine dropping by the grocery store to buy some milk – but alongside cow’s milk you see human milk from donors too. The cow’s milk costs about $3 per gallon, and there are mountains upon mountains of containers on the shelves. The human donor milk costs more than $500 per gallon and shelves are nearly empty. While dramatized here, this is the situation some neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and families encounter trying to feed their tiniest babies.
When I was in elementary school, the quintessential school-bought lunch contained a generic deli meat sandwich slathered with mayo, a carton of milk, and a bag of overly salted potato chips. Delicious and loved by nearly every student, the food being served was far from nutritious. The standards for school lunches have drastically changed after the implementation of federal policies, particularly the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010. This bill provided funding for school meals and child nutrition, promoted overall student wellness, and, perhaps most notably, set very clear standards for making school meals healthier by including key reforms to school meals such as increasing fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
 Wei Perng, PhD The “rise again” of baby-led weaning. For the last century or so, parents have been advised to introduce solid foods to their infants – usually starting sometime between 4 and 6 months of age – by spoon-feeding specially prepared foods. The meals start out as smooth purees and, as the infant gets older, progress in texture, flavor, and variety until 1 year of age, when the baby is able to eat what the rest of the family is eating. Spoon-feeding gives the parent control over what and how much the baby is eating. However, in the last decade or so, baby-led weaning has grown in popularity. Instead of giving the infant special foods, they are allowed to feed themselves finger-sized portions of family foods. (Of course, one should keep in mind that parents have likely been practicing baby-led weaning for millenia, prior to modern food processing technologies). In addition to promoting an inclusive eating environment wherein the baby joins the family at mealtime, baby-led weaning is purported to expose infants to a wide variety of foods, thereby decreasing risk of food allergies, and promote development of fine motor skills (discussed in book Rapley G and Murkett T. Baby-led weaning: helping your baby to love good food. Random House 2008). Of particular interest to me is the hypothesis that baby-led weaning reduces future risk of obesity. But how?
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