Former ADVANCE senior associate editor Terri Schaefer, who is now communications manager for the Adult Congenital Heart Association, let me know recently that Susan M. Fernandes, MHP, PA-C, a physician assistant in the cardiology department at Children’s Hospital in Boston, was the lead author of a study published recently in the journal ...

For the first time, health advocates have designated a specific month for national attention to pediatric obesity. September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and as we near its end I'd like to share what a few nurse practitioner students have done to call attention to it. Last weekend, three NP students from Samuel Merritt ...

I'm here at the annual conference of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP), where pediatric NPs have set a new record for conference attendance. About 1,500 pediatric NPs are here in Chicago to network, earn CE credits and discuss current issues. The conference officially kicked off yesterday with a moving opening ...

In Chicago, nurse practitioner Patricia Carr staffs the city's largest mobile pediatric care unit. The Care-A-Van provides immunizations, physicals, hearing and vision screenings, pulmonary function testing, asthma assessments, childhood health promotions, injury prevention and education.  “It’s an amazing program,” Carr told Chicago's ...

  Heather Riddle, a pediatric nurse practitioner in Florida, has taken the kind of bold step I love to read about. She decided to do something definitive to halt childhood obesity: She opened a fitness center for children. Her business, called Kicks for Kids, is located in Spring Hill (near St. Petersburg) and opened in late October. In ...