Nella Larsen's Paperwork: Reading to Black Children in the Harlem Branch Library

In this cross-sectional study, the accuracy of Cameriere's European formula was tested and a new specific model was developed for two samples of black and white South African children with known age and sex. For these purposes, 970 children of black South African ethnicity (girls 491, boys 479) and 974 with European ethnicity, living in South Africa (girls 493, boys 481), were retrospectively analyzed. The application of the European formula showed that there is a trend in the error estimates: the ages of the younger children are overestimated and those of the older children are underestimated, in both white and black children. A new model, based on the relationship between the apical width and the tooth length (maturity index) of the seven permanent mandibular teeth, was therefore constructed. The new developed equation for the South African population was able to explain 76% of total variance in white girls and 80% in white boys' subgroup. On the other side, the model explained 76% of total variance in black girls and 78% in the black boys' subgroup. The mean absolute error of the residuals (residuals = predicted age minus observed age) ranged from 0.718 to 0.769years, with the interquartile range (IQRres) ranging from 1.19 to 1.31years. Differently from the Cameriere's European formula, the plot did not tend to underestimate the chronological age significantly as the age increases. Cameriere's maturity index is reproducible in both samples of South African black and white children, for forensic purposes, and the Bayesian calibration approach is useful for a more accurate and precise estimation.

Black children deficient in galactose 1-phosphate uridyltransferase: Correlation of activity and immunoreactive protein in erythrocytes and leukocytes

Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children in the United States

Longitudinal atopic dermatitis endotypes: An atopic march paradigm that includes Black children

To examine bone mass changes in 321 black and white South African children in relation to habitual physical activity (PA) levels and calcium intakes. Children underwent two bone mass scans at ages nine and 10 years using dual X-Ray absorptiometry. PA levels and calcium intakes were assessed using questionnaires. Data were analyzed by regressing change in bone mineral content (BMC) and bone area (BA) from age nine to 10, against BA (for BMC), height and body weight. The residuals were saved and called residualized BMCGAIN and BAGAIN. Residualized values provide good indication of weight, height and BA-matched accumulation rates. White children had significantly higher PA levels and calcium intakes than black children. Most active white males had significantly higher residualized BMCGAIN and BAGAIN at the whole body, hip and spine but not at the radius, than those who were less active. Most active white females had significantly higher residualized BAGAIN at all sites except the radius than less-active girls. No such effects were seen in black children. There was no interactive effect on residualized BMCGAIN for calcium intake and PA (except at the spine in white girls). Bone mass and area gain is accentuated in pre- and early-pubertal children with highest levels of habitual physical activity. Limited evidence of an effect of dietary calcium intakes on BMC was found.

Objective: Parental cardiovascular disease (CVD) may indicate children’s CVD risk. This study examined whether parental obesity and disease were associated with child CVD risk factors, independent of child obesity, and whether associations differed by race. Methods: The sample included 395 White and Black 5-18 year-old children. Parental obesity was determined by self-reported height and weight, while their disease status was self-reported diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD), hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. Child’s risk factors included waist circumference (WC); resting systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) percentiles; and fasting triglycerides, HDL-C, LDL-C, total cholesterol, glucose and C-reactive protein (CRP). BMI z-scores (BMI-z) were calculated using CDC growth charts. Analysis of variance, unadjusted and adjusted for BMI-z, was used to examine associations of parental obesity and disease with each child risk factor, stratified by race. Results: Black children had higher BMI-z than White children (1.1 vs. 0.8, p<0.01) and were more likely to have parents with obesity (p<0.0001) and hypercholesterolemia (p<0.05), but not CHD or hypertension. Parental obesity was significantly associated with WC, SBP and DBP in White and Black children and with CRP in White children (all p<0.05). When adjusted for BMI-z, parental obesity was significantly associated with SBP in White children (p<0.05). Parental CHD was significantly associated with WC in Black children in both unadjusted and adjusted models (p<0.05), with CRP in Black children in unadjusted models (p<0.05), and with triglycerides in White children in adjusted models (p<0.05). Parental hypertension was associated with WC and triglycerides in White children in unadjusted models (p<0.05), and with no risk factors in adjusted models. Parental hypercholesterolemia was not associated with risk factors, except LDL-C in White children in adjusted models (p<0.05). Conclusion: Parental obesity and disease were associated with CVD risk factors in White and Black children, but child BMI-z attenuated many associations to non-significance. Further research is needed to investigate the additive utility of parental medical history to stratify children’s CVD risk.

Reviewed by: Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North by Crystal Lynn Webster Vanessa M. Holden (bio) Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North. By Crystal Lynn Webster. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 208. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $24.95.) Lucinda Ricks, a newly freed single mother, moved with her three children into the Shelter for Coloured Orphans in the City of Brotherly Love in 1827. Stephen, Simon, and Henry Ricks would initially live with their mother as boarders in the shelter, but, because of her precarious financial future, Lucinda surrendered her sons to the shelter and moved out into the city. The family’s story, including that of Simon and Stephen’s deaths while in the care of shelter workers, haunts Crystal Lynn Webster’s book, Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood. In it the Ricks navigate the changing landscape of Black freedom in a city noted in its time as a hub of free Black life. Webster tells their story and the stories of other free Black parents and children to demonstrate the important role that Black children and the contested meanings of their childhood played in shaping free Black life. Webster’s work offers a significant contribution to African American history. Few books have investigated the lives of free and enslaved antebellum Black children. Broadening our understanding of emancipation and free Black life, Webster argues that free Black children and command of their labor were central concerns of activist movements in the antebellum North. But beyond how adults contested the boundaries of Black childhood, Webster demonstrates how Black children acted politically and advocated for themselves. The book begins with an exploration of how white reformers and ante-bellum popular culture racialized childhood as a white and middle-class prerogative. Webster then demonstrates that while play was an essential hallmark of white childhood, Black children at play transgressed society’s expectations. While Black children were institutionalized at benevolent homes and orphanages, reformers instilled the middle-class values of industry and labor. These values were classed, raced, and imposed on the poor and racially marginalized. Benevolent homes, asylums, orphanages, almshouses, and reformatories run by white reformers and activists were sites of abuse, neglect, and suffering for many free children of color. Webster presents the bleak reality of children growing sick and dying. She also reads the building plans and [End Page 554] layouts of these institutions to demonstrate how literal structures reflected authorities’ ideas about the differences between white and Black children. Unlike their approach to white children, authorities also sent Black children to institutions intended for adults, rendering these youths vulnerable to even more abuse. Reformers and officials racialized and criminalized African American children and childhood, denying Black children the innocence and play afforded to white children. The line between placement in a benevolent home and incarceration in developing antebellum prisons was thin, and reformers often pushed Black children across it. For Black children, danger came from within and without institutions. Webster notes how whites targeted institutions for Black children with extralegal violence and destruction. Beyond brick-and-mortar institutions, Webster investigates a significant legal institution: indenture. With roots in systems of apprenticeship, the legal system of indenture bound an apprentice to a master for a set term of service. Ministers of the poor throughout antebellum America bound children, white and Black, to property-owning white adults who were obligated to provide their new wards with basic shelter, clothing, and food. In return, children were expected to work for their masters. As Webster points out, institutions often had stipulations that their charges would be placed through indenture with white adults. Officials also indentured Black children deemed destitute. Once their children were relinquished to or taken to an institution, Black parents faced considerable obstacles to retrieving them. Through this legal system of unfree labor, whites continued to control free Black children and profit from their exploitation. The system did not die when northern states began the process of emancipation, and it did not die in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment. Webster’s work presents important consideration of the value of Black children’s labor and the...

Librarians still have chance to grow with their libraries, and youth come in closer touch with teachers and librarians who may guide their reading. For book which has meant something to its reader is never allowed to moulder on shelves, and smaller library, well-used, may serve to light a chain of torches. (Curtis 95) Literature can be used as one of tools to build images and concepts in minds of children. Literature written for and about African American children can today be found on many bookstore shelves and in public and school libraries throughout United States. The characters in these books can be historical figures who reach back to arrival of African in America and to continuous struggle and development that is evident even today; other books reach further back - to continent of Africa before there was an America. The characters also display different regions, class levels, and family structures of African Americans. African American children's literature enables African American child to feel a sense of value and self-pride, and this literature also helps white children to understand and appreciate rich culture, history, and tradition of African American. As Mary McLeod Bethune stated in an address to Association for Study of Life and History, is important to give to all children a true picture of [the] (9). African American children's writer Walter Dean Myers has discussed importance of telling African American children stories that recount their historical past, inform them about their culture, and display images from their own African American family values and traditions. Is it not logical, asks Myers, for child to assume that if books denote who is significant, and that if people of color are not represented, then they don't count? It is this idea, this defining of value precepts, that should concern all parents. Children need books, in and out of school, that depict people who look like them because they are being told on a daily basis that these books are indicators of importance. (30) Approximately seventy years ago, African American children were routinely exposed to negative images of African Americans and African American culture in children's books which African American parents, librarians, and educators realized were detrimental to both African American and white children, and which therefore needed to be removed from library shelves. Mary McLeod Bethune's concern for children and history led her to argue that the ideals, character and attitudes of races are born within minds of children; most prejudices are born with youth and it is our duty to see that great researches of History are placed in language and story of child. Not only child but [the children] of all races should read and know of achievements, accomplishments and deeds of Negro (10). It was time to examine carefully books that were being used to educate children, and for African American writers to create works that could be more useful and much more truthful. The Associated Publishers, an African American publishing company founded in 1927 and backed by African American authors, educators, and historical scholars such as Carter G. Woodson and Charles Wesley, began publishing informative books that taught history and culture of African Americans, but company and its efforts were not large enough to remove negative depictions of African American from minds of many children throughout United States. African American librarians realized that African American children who came to their branch libraries needed to see images that were appropriately reflective of themselves in books they read, but few books addressed this need. Augusta Baker, an African American librarian in Children's Department at 135th Street Branch of New York Public Library, observed in 1975 that, by late thirties, some parents and other adults realized that black boys and girls were reading about heroes and history of every country without being told truth about contributions of their own African and slave ancestors to progress of this country. …

Study Finds Childhood Adversity Linked to Brain Differences in White, Black Children

To quantify physician-reported preventive counseling and screening during well-child visits (WCVs) and to examine racial and ethnic disparities in these activities. Cross-sectional study using the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, January 1993 through December 2002. Office-based physician practices. Children from birth to 18 years old who were seen by a physician for a WCV. Preventive counseling and screening. Well-child visits were shorter for Latino children than for white or black children. At WCVs, white children were more likely to receive preventive counseling than were black or Latino children (72% vs 61% vs 61%, respectively; P = .01) but not more likely to receive screening for elevated blood pressure, anemia, vision and hearing acuity, or lead toxicity. There were no differences in secondary diagnoses made at WCVs for white, black, or Latino children (15% vs 17% vs 14%, respectively; P = .65). The children who received the least counseling were Latino children in the public sector non-health maintenance organization setting (counseled at 39% of visits) and Latino children who self-paid for the visits (counseled at 26% of visits). After adjusting for possible confounders, including medications prescribed at the visit, black and Latino children were less likely to receive counseling than were white children (odds ratios, 0.68 and 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.48-0.97 and 0.44-0.90, respectively), and black children were less likely to receive preventive screening services (odds ratios, 0.65; 95% confidence interval, 0.45-0.93). By physician report in a nationally representative sample, black and Latino children received less counseling at WCVs than did white children. These disparities were unexplained by the competing demands of other secondary diagnoses or medications prescribed or dispensed.

The Black pediatric population is one that has been historically underserved and continues to have unmet needs. Factors including lack of diversity in orthopaedic studies and in historical standards, such as bone age, may inadvertently lead to inferior care. There are certain conditions in this population for which the practicing orthopaedic surgeon should have a higher degree of suspicion, including slipped capital femoral epiphysis, Blount disease, and postaxial polydactyly. Systemic diseases with higher rates in this population have orthopaedic manifestations, including sickle cell disease, vitamin D deficiency, and obesity. Racial discrepancies in access to prenatal care can have orthopaedic consequences for babies, especially cerebral palsy and myelodysplasia. Racial discrepancy exists in evaluation for nonaccidental trauma. Increased awareness of these issues better prepares practitioners to provide equitable care.

We investigated differences in physical activity (PA) levels between black and white South African 9-yr-old children and their association with bone mineral content (BMC) and density (BMD) by using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. PA was analyzed in terms of a metabolic (METPA; weighted metabolic score of intensity, frequency, and duration) and a mechanical (MECHPA; sum of all ground reaction forces multiplied by duration) component. There were significant ethnic differences in patterns of activity. White children expended a significantly greater energy score (METPA of 21.7 +/- 2.9) than black children (METPA of 9.5 +/- 0.5) (P < 0.001). When children were divided into quartiles according to the amount and intensity of sport played, the most active white children (using METPA scores) had significantly higher whole body BMD and higher hip and spine BMC and BMD than less active children. White children in the highest MECHPA quartile also showed significantly higher whole body, hip, and spine BMC and BMD than those children in the lowest quartile. No association between exercise and bone mass of black children was found. In this population, PA has an osteogenic association with white children, but not black children, which may be explained by the lower levels of PA in the black children. Despite this, black children had significantly greater bone mass at the hip and spine (girls only) (P < 0.001) even after adjustment for body size. The role of exercise in increasing bone mass may become increasingly critical as a protective mechanism against osteoporosis in both ethnic groups, especially because the genetic benefit exhibited by black children to higher bone mass may be weakened with time, as environmental influences become stronger.

Racial Disparities in Asthma-Related Health Outcomes in Children with Severe/Difficult-to-Treat Asthma

Child health and the social environment of white and black children

Low birth weight is associated with elevated serum lipoprotein(a) in white and black American children ages 5?11 y