Children born to mothers with obesity, gestational diabetes mellitus or a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy have higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure than children born to mothers without these risk factors, according to a new USC study. Among children whose mothers had at least one risk factor, blood pressure also rose more quickly between ages 2 and 18 compared to their peers. Researchers used data collected between January 1994 and March 2023 through the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. The data include demographic and health information on 12,480 mother-child pairs from across the country, about half of whom identified as non-white. The study found that children born to mothers with at least one cardiometabolic risk factor had a systolic blood pressure (SBP) that averaged 4.88 percentile points higher than children whose mothers had no risk factors. Diastolic blood pressure (DBP) averaged 1.90 percentile points higher. Children born to mothers with two risk factors faced even higher blood pressure. For example, when mothers had both obesity and a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, their children had SBP that averaged 7.31 points higher and DBP that averaged 4.04 points higher than children whose mothers had no risk factors.. The findings, which suggest that blood pressure interventions could start as early as pregnancy, were just published in JAMA Network Open. 

Galena Park, Texas, is on the northern bank of the Houston Ship Channel, home of the nation’s largest petrochemical complex. About 4,200 of the town’s nearly 10,500 residents live within a mile of industrial sites that handle substances that are sufficiently hazardous to be covered under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Risk Management Program. Now, a new, multidisciplinary study from researchers at Texas A&M University, that is part of a broader, multi-year effort, sheds light on how Galena Park residents feel about a novel remedy for their situation: home buyouts.

A Rutgers Health researcher recommends that states borrow the master settlement playbook to curtail the distribution of unauthorized electronic cigarettes.

Nancy Brown, Chief Executive Officer of the American Heart Association, has been named to TIME’s 2025 TIME100 Health, a list recognizing the 100 most influential individuals in health.