Hey thanks so much for joining us
here on 9 News Plus it is August
and that means of course it's back
to school for a lot of kids and
I guess for parents it's going to
adjust your schedules as well.
So we want to get you a few kind
of health safety tips as we head
back to school and for that we're
joined by 9 news health experts
Doctor Paul Coley for some of those
helpful tips we have back to school.
Thanks so much for joining us here today.
Hi Chris, how are you doing? I'm good.
I had COVID last month as you know,
but a lot better.
Now and obviously not feeling those impacts,
but Doctor Corey,
with a lot of kids going back to school now,
obviously that's top of mind for a
lot of parents out there as well.
One of those kind of top line takeaways
or things that parents and kids should
know as they head back to school.
You know, I'm feeling a lot better this year,
Chris, about our kids going back
to school because this is the
first year that we have kids of
all ages eligible for the vaccines.
So now we have a really good
preventive measure in place as our
kids are headed back to school.
Now of course we do have to keep in mind.
That it's not just COVID, but colds,
flus, and potentially even monkey pox,
which we have seen in children
that are all viruses that could
potentially affect our kids this
year as they go back to school.
So I think education is going to be
a key piece of this sort of making
sure that you're aware of what your
school's policies are with respect to
all of these parameters vaccination.
You know, hand hygiene,
education of the kids,
and then really just figuring out a
plan for yourself and your family to
keep your kids as safe as possible.
I guess before we get into some of those.
Specifics about what to do
this is now year three,
that a school year is being directly
impacted by COVID and this is
admittedly a very general question.
How are kids?
How has COVID evolved here
through the years in terms
of how it impacts children?
You know I think the biggest impacts
we saw were really in the first year
and the second year probably peaked in
the second year with respect to mental
health disorders and substance abuse.
And now given that you know 40% of
Americans are saying that they've sort of
gone back to their pre pandemic routines.
We are starting to see thankfully some of
those mental effects at least start to
abate now in terms of the physical effects.
Whether it comes to adults or kids,
a lot of things were missed
during the pandemic.
In terms of preventive health visits.
In terms of vaccinations,
and there's even some theories that
because we really many of us have not had
the flu over the last couple of years,
that subsequent flu seasons may actually
end up being potentially a little bit
more severe because we really haven't
had that protection from the year before,
so it remains to be seen.
How it's going to play out,
I would say we're starting to be
at least on the downslope in terms
of some of the health effects of
the pandemic because many of our
routines have gone back to normal.
Now moving forward,
going into the fall and winter,
we're really going to still have
to keep our guard up because we
know that there's new variants that
are still looming on the horizon.
Well, Speaking of those new variants,
how has the risk for kids
perhaps contracting the virus
and then perhaps bring it back
to their parents, how does that?
Has that risk increased in the
last few years with Omicron?
Well, we know macrons more
transmissible and more contagious,
but we also know that as we're
vaccinating some of our kids,
there's some cross protection with
even though it's original variant
vaccine that we're giving to our kids
with respect to transmitting Omicron.
We also know at this point that the
majority of us in America are immune
either through vaccination or through
infection or for any of us actually both,
such as yourself.
So that really does actually offer
another layer of protection for
the parents and also for the kids.
Themselves too,
cause the parents can't give
it to the kids as efficiently.
So on the background of all of This
is why the CDC has really decided,
I think,
to start to loosen up some of those
back to school guidelines and change
the way that kids are mixing in school.
Very different from what we
were doing last year.
Yeah, let's get into that a little bit.
So those new CDC guidelines specifically
what are they and how are they
going to affect kids and parents?
So kids no longer have to stay 6 feet apart.
And so that's a big one if you are exposed
to somebody as a child who tests positive.
Used to be what's called the test
to stay strategy that you actually
have to test negative repeatedly
in order to come back to class.
They've kind of taken that away
if the child is asymptomatic.
They've also taken away
something called Cohorting,
which was really keeping kids in little
pods so that they can do some of that
contact tracing because they're now
saying that contact tracing should
only be reserved for high risk settings
like prisons or nursing homes and such,
not necessarily be done in the school.
And then they're also saying you
can come back to school in five.
Case if you test positive,
as long as your symptoms are getting
better and you have that mask on
and now with some of those
new guidelines in mind,
how can parents keep their kids
safe through the fall and winter?
Yeah, you know. So my nephew's going
to kindergarten for the first time.
And yeah, yeah, he's really excited about it.
And and I'm so glad that he got the
vaccine because I think one of the
biggest things that we can do with
respect to COVID in particular.
You know, of course,
is to get our children vaccinated,
and we now have two good vaccines.
The Moderna vaccine does give immunity
a little faster your, you know,
immune within about five weeks,
six weeks, excuse me,
as opposed to the Pfizer vaccine
which takes about 11 weeks for
your kids below 5 to get immune,
whereas for the kids over 5
it's only A2 dose vaccine.
So get our kids vaccinated.
I think that's a big piece of it,
whether they're at home or
they're going to school if they're
eligible for the vaccine.
But I also think there's some other
kind of healthy behaviors that we
really have to permeate into our kids,
some of the hand hygiene that we've
talked about but I like to think about.
From 3 domains of health.
When it comes to our kids,
there's their mental health.
There's their physical health.
And then there's their emotional
health or their personality development.
So I really want all parents as their
kids are heading back to school to
sort of think about damage control
from what's already happened and
then how we can optimize all those 3
parameters for our kids moving forward.
Fine for COVID. What other things
can we do to keep our kids
healthy into the fall and winter?
Yeah. So I think a big piece of that is,
you know, obviously the physical health,
which I would say is, is eating, right?
So make sure your child has breakfast
because there's actually data
that children who eat breakfast,
or sometimes even the kids that participate
in those school breakfast programs,
they actually do better academically
than the ones that don't.
So breakfast really is the most
important meal of the day.
Make sure, even though you're obviously
very rushed and pressed for time,
that you're giving them healthy snacks.
So try to keep our kids.
Away from those processed foods,
things that come out of bags or boxes
and you really want to try to lean
towards more fruits and vegetables
and those types of snacks for our
kids because we know that childhood
obesity is on the rise and we know
that that's becoming more of an issue.
We want to make sure that they're staying
active so when they come home after school,
some activity that makes them get off
the couch and do something active
rather than screen time or computer
time or some of the other things that
maybe during the pandemic they got.
Potentially, you know,
in the habit of doing and then
the last piece of that is sleep.
So there's actually data that 40 to 60%
of middle to high school students are
not getting enough sleep every night.
And we know that doesn't just
affect their academic performance,
it actually can affect their growth.
It can affect their their mental development,
it can affect them psychologically
in terms of anxiety and depression.
So really,
try to get those kids into a sleep
routine because summer is over and
it's now time to go back to school,
so make sure that they're getting those
correct number of sleep that they need
is the amount of that.
A middle schooler elementary schooler?
And sleep, is that comparable
to adults? Is it 8 hours?
No, it's actually a little different,
so it's you you want to sleep 9 to 10
hours if you're under the age of 13,
and if you're over the age of 13,
you want to sleep at least 8 to 9 hours.
So as you get older until we become adults,
the amount of sleep you'll require
goes down and then actually
as we become older adults,
we can see that start to go back up
again and people need naps and people
might need a little bit more sleep as
they potentially become even older.
Geriatric aged.
I'm going to look into the camera.
Here and make it appeal to my boss here
at 9 News I need a daily nap every day.
Here I'm doctor Coley signs off on it.
But seriously, doctor Cole.
Is that what I said?
I'm just gonna, so I'm gonna just take
what you said there and expand on it.
Yes, so, but a serious note, some really
great tips for kids and for parents.
So thank you so much.
Doctor Coley and thanks for
joining us here on News Plus
time my pleasure Chris.