Local doctors recently got a warning that the health of children and teens is on a dangerous decline. And one expert says there are problems that health care needs to change to fix the situation. For the first time in generations, today's children and teens might not outlive their baby boomer parents.

 
"I think that would be about the biggest health tragedy imaginable to think about a generation of children who don't outlive the lifespan of their parents," says Dr. Stephen Daniels of Children's Hospital in Denver.

It was a message he brought home to doctors and medical students at LSU Health Sciences Center. Dr. Daniels is the chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado, Denver School of Medicine and Children's Hospital in Denver, and he traveled to New Orleans to explain how doctors, especially pediatricians and family medicine physicians, will need to change how they practice medicine because the health of children is changing.

So should a mother or father be surprised if they bring a child to the pediatrician and he or she tells the parents to stop smoking or serving high fatty meals?

"It definitely could happen and I think that's where pediatricians should be focusing because the more we learn about those kinds of influences on health early in life the more we realize that it is actually having an impact," he says.

The statistics for young patients are alarming: Obesity up from 5 to18 percent, high blood pressure from 1 to 5 percent, young patients entering the hospital for chronic illness up from 25 percent to higher than 50 percent.  What's happening is pediatricians have done a great job in preventing infections through vaccines, prolonging lives of children with cancer and even fixing birth defects such as holes in the heart, and saving preemies. 

But with obesity, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and asthma on the rise, today's children will have strokes and heart attacks at a much younger age. It's a message that has it's roots in studies done in southeast Louisiana where at LSU Dr. Jack Strong showed children's arteries already filled with plaque and Dr. Gerald Berenson of LSU then Tulane in the Bougalusa Heart study, found bad childhood health makes sick adults.

"This is an issue where you really need the whole family working together where you really need children to change some of their behaviors around health," says Dr. Daniels. 

And pregnant mothers need to change health patters as well.

"We are actually learning now that it may even begin in the womb, so that pregnant mothers and how they take care of themselves also are really important in this process," he adds. 

The call to change goes out to doctors, families and schools.  Have a heart healthful diet at a very young age, breast feed, stay active, limit TV and computer time, make P.E. an important part of school. Doctors need to create and health insurance companies need to reimburse for a one-stop coordinated care with dietitians, doctors, social workers and behavior experts. 

Doctors no longer call type 2 diabetes adult-onset diabetes because so many children and teens have the condition.