At sites across the region, you will be able to hand in unwanted, unused prescription drugs.

During the last Drug Take-Back-Day, Americans dropped off more than 118 tons of unwanted and expired medications for safe disposal.

The drop-off centers will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

To find a drop-off center located near to you go here.

Check back frequently as collection sites are continuously being added

Today, parents need to address serious issues like bullying and gun safety.

During National Safe Kids Week, April 21 – 28 (www.safekids.org), Polyclinic pediatrician Dr. Melissa Hathaway is offering tips for keeping kids safe from both every day threats to health and safety, and the life threatening issues of the day.

Review Safety Often

As a pediatrician, Dr. Hathaway reminds parents to review safety issues often to keep up with their growing and changing child.  “Make it a habit,” advises Dr. Hathaway.  “One of the reasons children have accidents is because they develop so fast that caregivers have a hard time keeping up.”

She recommends that parents and caregivers think about safety in terms of age and by situation – “at home, at play, as school, and on the go.”

Dr. Hathaway points out that as a community, we all have a duty to protect children from two of the biggest dangers: guns and bullying.

Gun Safety

“Sadly, there have been several recent gun-related tragic events in the Northwest, says Dr. Hathaway.  “The best way to keep your children safe from injury or death from guns is to never have a gun in the home, car, or anywhere your child has access to.

Talk to your children about the dangers of guns and what to do if they find themselves in a situation involving a gun.”

While parents may take every precaution at home, they should not forget to find out if there are guns in the homes where their children play.

“It can be hard for a parent or caregiver to ask about guns,” she points out.  “One way to ask is, ‘My child is very curious.  Do you have guns or anything dangerous that he might get into?’”

She suggests that for those who do choose to keep a gun in the home, always keep the gun unloaded and locked.  “Also lock up bullets and store them in a separate place, and make sure to hide the keys to the locked boxes.  Children are naturally curious, and their innate urge to discover new things can overcome any parent’s warnings.”

Bullying

Bullying is becoming increasingly common and can be a deadly problem.  Bullying is defined as unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance.  The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated over time.

“Anyone and everyone can help prevent bullying by talking about it, promoting a safe environment, modeling respectful behavior and treating others with kindness,” says Dr. Hathaway.  “Talk to kids about what bullying is, what they should do if they see it happening, and how to stand up to kids who bully. Know the warning signs, talk about it, and intervene immediately if you see bullying behavior.”

Resources

It can be overwhelming for a parent or caregiver to keep track of all the risks inside and outside the home.  “Enlist the help of your family, friends and community to endure your child is safe wherever they go,” says Dr. Hathaway.

There are a variety of websites dedicated to education and awareness regarding safety in childhood and beyond.

Dr. Hathaway recommends:

• The American Academy of Pediatrics HealthyChildren.Org website.

• Washington State Medical Association webpage on bullying: www.wsma.org/patient_resources/bullying.cfm

Teens who received emotional intelligence training in school had improved scores on several measures of emotional well-being, including less anxiety, depression and social stress, according to a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Improvements from the training lasted up to six months after the program ended.

Emotional intelligence, or EI, refers to the ability to accurately appraise, express and regulate emotion. “The ability to handle emotions is essential for one’s physical and psychological well-being,” said study lead author Desiree Ruiz-Aranda.

In addition, adolescents who are healthier mentally are healthier physically and may engage in fewer risky behaviors.

Key Points:

• The inability to regulate emotional states has been linked to mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression.

• Many mental health disorders appear during adolescence.

• Teens who receive emotional intelligence training have lower measures of depression and social stress, even up to six months later.

“Emotional abilities need to begin as early as possible and preventive interventions should ideally be provided prior to developing significant symptoms,” said Ruiz-Aranda.

The study examined about 300 Spanish students who participated in 24 one-hour training sessions during a two-year period.

Teens in the study group participated in games, role-playing, art and discussion designed to promote the recognition of emotions in different contexts and to build empathy and emotional problem solving.

When compared with a control group, these teens had lower measures of depression, social stress, and other negative feelings, even up to six months later.

Successful programs need to be catered to individual cultures and ages and be applied to everyday settings, Ruiz-Aranda said.

Schools have not done well in preparing students for life with things such as emotional intelligence training, said Gary Low, Ph.D., professor emeritus of education at Texas A&M University in Kingsville.

He added that schools often don’t help students learn to cope with fears, stresses, relationships and other areas of life.

“We just hope that people learn that as they grow older, and I think we’ve not paid attention to developing a curriculum that would really help young people experience more success in life,” he said.

Health Behavior News Service is part of the Center for Advancing Health

The Health Behavior News Service disseminates news stories on the latest findings from peer-reviewed research journals. HBNS covers both new studies and systematic reviews of studies on (1) the effects of behavior on health, (2) health disparities data and (3) patient engagement research. The goal of HBNS stories is to present the facts for readers to understand and use for themselves to make informed choices about health and health care.

Dr. Hathaway earned her medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine after receiving a bachelor of science in neurobiology.

She completed an internship and residency in pediatrics at Primary Children’s Hospital, University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and she is  is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.

She joined The Polyclinic Pediatrics from Seattle Children’s Hospitals Emergency Department and Urgent Care Clinics.

She previously worked as a medical assistant at the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center.

In addition to providing general pediatric care from birth through adolescence, Dr. Hathaway has a special interest in preventative care through health promotion, disease prevention, and safety advocacy.

She is accepting new patients and may be reached at: 206-292-2249.

This story comes from KHN partner ‘s Shots blog.

It may sound counterintuitive, but a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine has concluded that the best way to slow the nation’s breakneck spending on medical care is to impose a tax on every health care transaction.

That tax — amount TBD, but possibly a half-percent or so — would go to replenish the coffers of the nation’s state and local public health agencies.

In so doing, according to the IOM panel, the public health workforce could renew its historic role in looking at population rather than individual health care, and thus “offer efficient and effective approaches to improving the nation’s health.”

US lags behind its peers on health status while spending more on health every country in the world.

Currently, said Marthe Gold, professor of Community Health and Social Medicine at the City College of New York and chair of the panel, the U.S. spends only about 3 percent of the $2.5 trillion it spends on health care overall on public health. It has a history of “unpredictable, inadequate and uncoordinated funding.”

Yet “public health also has a track record of achievement in vanquishing the historic causes of death and disease,” she said, from early successes like ensuring clean water and sanitary food to more recent campaigns to get people to stop smoking or use seat belts.

The public health infrastructure has taken a hit during the recent economic downturn: Roughly one-fifth of the local public health workforce has been lost through attrition and layoffs.

Renewing that infrastructure could have a profound impact on slowing the rate of growth in health spending, the panel argues.

For example, public health measures — including community-based outreach — could help reduce adult obesity by 50 percent, the panel says.

Sounds ambitious, but as the panel notes, that’s about the same relative reduction in smoking rates that resulted from the “public health community’s multifaceted attack on smoking” in the past few decades. It would also save the U.S. an estimated $58 billion in health care spending.

In order to meet those goals, the panel says every public health agency would need to be able to deliver a “minimum package of services.”

That would include what it calls “foundational” services, such as the ability to do basic disease surveillance and communicate with the public, and “programmatic” services, such as injury prevention and communicable disease prevention.

But to get there, the federal government would need to at least double the $11.6 billion it invests each year in public health activities, according to the panel’s estimates.

Which brings us to that pesky tax.

Panel member George Isham, medical director at HealthPartners in Bloomington, Minn., acknowledged that “it’s difficult to propose any kind of increase in taxation.”

But the group considered a number of different financing mechanisms before settling on a minimal tax on medical transactions as the best solution: It’s a tax related to the goal; it would raise sufficient funds; and it would not have a bad economic consequence. In short, said Isham, “it’s an investment we can’t afford not to make.”

Now they just have to convince the rest of the nation of that.

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.