(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Most parents expect healthcare providers to answer their questions about circumcision, but they don't want a specific recommendation on the procedure, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.
More than half of male infants born in the United States are circumcised, but the rates of circumcision continue to decline.
"Both pro- and anti-circumcision advocates feel strongly about their views, which can create anxiety for new or expectant parents who are trying to find objective information on which to base a decision. In this situation, healthcare providers can be an important source of help," says Sarah J. Clark, M.P.H. , associate director of the National Poll on Children's Health and associate research scientist in the University of Michigan Department of Pediatrics.
"But our poll shows that parents don't want or expect a directive from their healthcare provider, but want them in a consultant role, providing information so they can make up their own minds."
Over 40% of parents in this poll said the provider should not recommend a specific decision about circumcision, and 75% said that once a decision is made, providers should accept it without argument. So for providers, this sets up a different sort of relationship with patients, Clark says, in which the patient is looking to them as sounding board rather than a decision maker.
Parents do expect providers to give information about circumcision. In the poll, 87% would like to get information before the baby is born, and 81% feel their baby's healthcare provider would be the best source. However, few parents meet with the pediatrician during the prenatal period.
"This is a missed opportunity for parents to hear from a trusted source at a critical time in their decision-making about circumcision. Many parents don't know that they can schedule a prenatal visit with their child's pediatrician to talk over issues just like these," says Clark, who is also a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
Parents ranked healthcare providers as the best source of information, well ahead of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control, or parenting books. Only 5 percent of parents rated internet searches as a trustworthy source of information about circumcision and only 9 percent felt that they could tell the difference between true and false information on the internet.
"Welcoming a new baby is an exciting but also an anxious time. According to this poll, healthcare providers can best help their patients by being an unbiased source of information about circumcision rather than pushing a particular decision," Clark says.
INFORMATION:
Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlRjaPMiojY
Full report:
C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health
Website: Check out the Poll's website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 80 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail NPCH@med.umich.edu.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mottnpch
Twitter: @MottNPCH
Additional resources:
http://thecircumcisiondecision.com/
http://kidshealth.org/parent/system/surgical/circumcision.html
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/what-about-circumcision
Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health – based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System – is designed to measure major healthcare issues and trends for U.S. children.
Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK) for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies. The survey was administered in March 2014 to a randomly selected, stratified group of adults expecting or planning to have a child within the next two years (n=1,516), from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 53 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is ±1 to 4 percentage points.
Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan.
Parents want info about circumcision, not directives from health-care providers
Parents want questions answered by health-care provider, but only 23 percent want recommendation, according to U-M's National Poll on Children's Health
2014-07-21
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Another advancement in imaging from INRS professor François Légaré's team
2014-07-21
François Légaré's team at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre successfully imaged a chemical reaction with a spatial and temporal resolution greatly exceeding that obtained to date using microscopes. The team used a femtosecond laser source to shoot a molecular movie of how an acetylene molecule turns into vinylidene. An article presenting the advancement was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
"The approach we developed combines multiphoton ionization and Coulomb explosion imaging. With the significantly improved ...
NRL reveals new meteorological insight into mid-level clouds
2014-07-21
WASHINGTON -- Research meteorologists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division (MMD) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, employing the Navy's Mid-Course Doppler Radar (MCR) at Cape Canaveral, were able to characterize mid-level, mixed-phase altocumulus clouds.
In altocumulus clouds, at medium altitudes ranging from 6,000 feet to 20,000 feet above mean sea level, water droplets can remain in a supercooled liquid phase at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, the freezing point of water. The supercooled liquid water found at temperatures ...
Mental health issues in children with relatives who participated in manhunt after Boston Marathon
2014-07-21
Children with relatives who were called upon to participate in the interagency manhunt following the Boston Marathon attack carried a particularly heavy mental health burden, according to a Depression and Anxiety study that included surveys of Boston-area parents and other caretakers.
Researchers found that the proportion of youth with likely PTSD was 5.7 times higher among youth with relatives in the manhunt than among youth without. Children with relatives in the manhunt also experienced more emotional symptoms and hyperactivity or inattention.
"Beyond informing our ...
Researchers simplify process to purify water using seed extracts
2014-07-21
Researchers have streamlined and simplified a process that uses extracts from seeds of Moringa oleifa trees to purify water, reducing levels of harmful bacteria by 90% to 99%. The hardy trees that are drought resistant are cultivated widely throughout many countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The protocol, which is outlined in a Current Protocols in Microbiology review, is low-cost and efficient, making it especially useful for people living in extreme poverty in developing countries who are presently drinking highly turbid and contaminated water. Of these, some ...
Replacing coal and oil with natural gas will not help fight global warming
2014-07-21
Both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger greenhouse gas footprint than do coal or oil, especially for the primary uses of residential and commercial heating.
Dr. Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology, came to this conclusion after assessing the best available data and analyzing greenhouse gas footprints for both methane (including shale gas and conventional gas) and carbon dioxide over a timescale of 20-years following emissions. The findings are published in Energy Science & Engineering.
"While emissions of carbon dioxide ...
Mothers of children with autism benefit from peer-led intervention
2014-07-21
Peer-led interventions that target parental well-being can significantly reduce stress, depression and anxiety in mothers of children with disabilities, according to new findings released today in the journal Pediatrics.
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers from Vanderbilt University examined two treatment programs in a large number of primary caregivers of a child with a disability. Participants in both groups experienced improvements in mental health, sleep and overall life satisfaction and showed less dysfunctional parent-child interactions.
"The well-being ...
Carbyne morphs when stretched
2014-07-21
Applying just the right amount of tension to a chain of carbon atoms can turn it from a metallic conductor to an insulator, according to Rice University scientists.
Stretching the material known as carbyne -- a hard-to-make, one-dimensional chain of carbon atoms -- by just 3 percent can begin to change its properties in ways that engineers might find useful for mechanically activated nanoscale electronics and optics.
The finding by Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues appears in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
Until recently, ...
Philosopher uses game theory to understand how words, actions acquire meaning
2014-07-21
MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Why does the word "dog" have meaning? If you say "dog" to a friend, why does your friend understand you?
Kansas State University philosopher Elliott Wagner aims to address these types of questions in his latest research, which focuses on long-standing philosophical questions about semantic meaning. Wagner, assistant professor of philosophy, and two other philosophers and a mathematician are collaborating to use game theory to analyze communication and how it acquires meaning.
"If I order a cappuccino at a coffee shop, I usually don't think about ...
New technique uses 'simulated' human heart to screen drugs
2014-07-21
A Coventry University scientist has developed a pioneering new way – using samples of beating heart tissue – to test the effect of drugs on the heart without using human or animal trials.
The breakthrough is the work of Dr Helen Maddock – an expert in cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology from the University's Centre for Applied Biological and Exercise Sciences – and could lead to the lives of hundreds of future patients being saved and the quality of their treatments improved.
Adverse effects of drugs on the cardiovascular system are a major cause of many medical ...
Age-related macular degeneration occurs much earlier than previously assumed
2014-07-21
It is widely accepted that age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of visual impairment and blindness in industrialized countries. However, it is questionable whether it can continue to be defined as a disease in people in their 50s and beyond. Investigations to determine the incidence of age-related macular degeneration undertaken as part of the Gutenberg Health Study of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have shown that even persons under the age of 50 years may be affected by an early form of the eye disease. ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Older teens who start vaping post-high school risk rapid progress to frequent use
Corpse flowers are threatened by spotty recordkeeping
Riding the AI wave toward rapid, precise ocean simulations
Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?
Pink skies
Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research
Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered
% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?
An app can change how you see yourself at work
NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals
New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China
Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds
Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea
New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea
Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes
Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others
Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke
Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition
Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life
Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy
Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming
Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly
Alcohol makes male flies sexy
TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income
Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression
Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring
Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs
AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders
First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes
Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows
[Press-News.org] Parents want info about circumcision, not directives from health-care providersParents want questions answered by health-care provider, but only 23 percent want recommendation, according to U-M's National Poll on Children's Health