The good side to doing research

Research that Benefits Children and Families----- Uplifting Stories

OPTION 1: These articles really show the benefits of research

According to New Yorker's Family Research Foundation (NYFRF), and the Washington-based Family Research Council they released ‘Adoption Works Well’ which is a literature demonstrating that adoption is a life-altering benefit for children. Ninety-percent of adopting Americans have a positive view of adoption and less than fifteen percent have no regrets. According to Dr. Fagan, "Adoption is a remarkable act by generous people, who offer their money, attention, affection, and time to give young children a better chance in life." Adoption helps create positive family relationships between children who are adopted within the first year of life because the children have secure attachments as often as non-adoptees. The adopted mother's sensitivity contributes to a rich, positive home life. Adoption helps the birth mothers who put their children up for adoption have better chances to finish school, become less likely to live in poverty, or receive public assistance.

Adoption helps improve antisocial behavior because of the relationship created by the adoptive parents. Early adoption makes language acquisitions easier, adoptees do not linger behind the general population in academic performance because they outperform their non-adopted birth peers. In addition, adoptive families influence their children's cognitive capabilities. After reading this research literature, it help to see that  adoption is important because children deserve to be raised by loving and caring people who want to help children to become productive adults.

Developing Safe and Effective Medicines for Children

The NIH’s Dr. Anne Zajicek, is at the forefront of efforts to make children’s medications safe, effective, and correctly dosed.

Children are not “small adults,” when it comes to medicines. “As a mother, if my child gets sick, I want him to get the right medicine, and I want it to be safe and effective,” says Dr. Anne Zajicek about her 12-year-old son Eli. “And the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act does that.”  Dr. Zajicek, MD, PharmD, is not only a mother. She is a pediatrician and the chief of the Obstetric and Pediatric Pharmacology Branch (OPPB) at the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).She is also helping to make drugs for children safe, effective, and prescribed in proper dosages as part of a long-range, multi-million-dollar clinical research effort being carried out under the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA). The NICHD has the lead role in funding and overseeing much of the BPCA-related research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which covers drug and medical device development for newborn and premature babies, and children until the age of 18.

 Dr. Danny Benjamin, MD, PhD, is a professor of pediatrics at Duke University and director of the Duke Clinical Research Unit pediatrics program. He is also the father of a 10-year-old who takes seven different medicines every day. Many of them lack age-appropriate information about how much to take (dosing) and in what form (whether liquid or chewable). So, like many other parents in similar situations, Dr. Benjamin has to rely on simple techniques to estimate the doses.

Since 2007 alone, more than 346 pediatric studies have been carried out under BPCA, involving 155,755 patients, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since 1998, over 424 drugs have received specific pediatric labeling information changes. These drugs are used to treat many diseases, including asthma, sickle cell disease, ADHD, influenza, high blood pressure, leukemia, cerebral palsy, diabetes, skin diseases, and kidney failure.

Reference

www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/.../winter12pg4-5.html‎