World Education News

With one in three children in the U.S. now classified as overweight or obese, there’s an increasing focus on helping overweight kids navigate challenging environments — in particular, the school hallways and classrooms. One person working on this goal is Dr. Yolanda Hancock, a former elementary school teacher, whose patients need guidance on how to navigate the unique challenges that come from being an overweight student.

Kavitha Cardoza, writing about Hancock for NPR, explains that her patient list includes children are 12 and younger who have the body mass index as high as 47. On the day Cardoza visits her office, Hancock is examining a 13-year-old boy who weighs nearly 260 lbs and whose appearance indicates that he is pre-diebetic.

The New York Times is reporting that, contrary to expectations, a year-old New York City pilot program that distributed contraceptives like morning-after pills to high school students for free has encountered very little vocal opposition from parents. The program, which originally operated at 14 schools before one of the campuses dropped out, sought to emulate the approach used by privately-operated school-based health clinics which have been serving students in NYC for the past several years.

Although the health clinics have proved successful, they only provide access to about a quarter of the city’s students. The city-run program was supposed to fill this gap, with the schools chosen to participate specifically selected because their students don’t have nearby medical providers and run a higher risk than average for teen pregnancy and acquiring sexually transmitted infections.

Parents were given a chance to opt their children out of the program by returning a signed form to the school. They could also select the kind of reproductive health services their children could and could not receive. According to the data provided by the Department of Education, only about one or two percent of parents actually returned the forms.