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Reuters - High child mortality rates in conservative Afghanistan are linked not just to war but to mothers being uneducated and having little or no say when their children need medical help, a study has found.

Children who are physically or sexually abused are more than twice as likely to have asthma as their peers, according to a recent study of urban children in Puerto Rico. In fact, physical and sexual abuse was second only to maternal asthma in all the risk factors tested, including paternal asthma and indicators of socioeconomic status.

For parents of sick children, one of the most important measures of quality hospital care is how well nurses communicate about treatment, tests and pain management. In the July-August 2008 issue of Pediatric Nursing, Susan Hong and her co-authors explore the relationship between nurses' communication and pediatric parents' satisfaction. The authors studied the pediatric unit of a United States teaching hospital on the west coast.

Managing children's pain is a crucial role for nurses, however there have been conflicting studies about nurses' pain assessment and treatment responses. In the July-August 2008 issue of Pediatric Nursing, Ruth A. Griffin and co-authors report results from a national survey of nurses that explored how nurses rated children's pain levels and how much analgesia they would recommend.

The thorny issue of conducting medical research on children is one of the most difficult ethical debates in health care today. In the Pediatric Ethics, Issues, & Commentary column of the July-August 2008 issue of Pediatric Nursing, author Pam Pieper examines two schools of thought regarding this controversial topic.

Enter your child's weight and age and see what percentile they are on the US growth charts:

Today's Vice Presidential nomination of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, mother of a child with Down syndrome, brings national attention to the approximately 350,000 individuals with Down syndrome living in the United States. The Down Syndrome Research and Treatment Foundation (DSRTF), a nonprofit organization in existence since 2004, is the leading private source of funding for Down syndrome cognitive research in the US.