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A Weill Cornell Medicine investigator and other members of a technical advisory group to the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund have outlined measures that nations can take to ensure that children’s health is accounted for within climate change goals. The authors discuss concrete and achievable indicators in a commentary published Oct. 1 in The Lancet Planetary Health.

“Children have specific needs that often get overlooked,” said lead author Dr. Ilan Cerna-Turoff, an assistant professor of epidemiology in emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. “We’re making sure that doesn’t happen.”

Dr. Ilan Cerna-Turoff. Credit: Travis Curry

Prior exposure to coronaviruses that cause ordinary colds can boost the immune system’s ability to attack a vulnerable site on the COVID-19-causing coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding suggests a new vaccination strategy that might provide broader and more durable protection against SARS-CoV-2 strains compared with existing vaccines—and might also protect against other emergent coronaviral threats.

In the study, published Oct. 9 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers analyzed human antibody responses to the base of SARS-CoV-2’s outer spike protein. This segment, known as the S2 subunit, mediates the coronavirus’s entry into a host cell, and because of this critical function does not vary much between different coronavirus subfamilies. Thus, targeting it successfully could help provide broad protection against existing and future coronavirus threats. Although exposure to SARS-CoV-2 alone elicits a weak antibody response against S2, the researchers found evidence that prior exposure to common cold coronaviruses, especially one called OC43, can prime the immune system for a much more effective anti-S2 response—one that may be able to neutralize a wide range of coronaviruses.

Dr. Sallie Permar, top pediatrician and a parent, shares why she vaccinated her children and reminds parents to keep their kids protected - especially since COVID-19 is already circulating around.

Pediatricians highly recommended vaccination for children from 6 months to 18 years old.

Here's What We Know: Parents want to keep their kids healthy and missing school is hard on the entire family. Vaccination helps prevent or lessen symptoms and reduces the risk of passing it on to others.

If your child isn't feeling well or you're unsure about what to do, talk to your pediatrician for more guidance.

Watch Dr. Permar's video to learn more.

Among preterm newborns, greater exposure to the mother’s voice after birth appeared to speed up the maturation of a key language-related brain circuit, in a small clinical trial conducted by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Burke Neurological Institute and Stanford Medicine. The finding provides direct experimental support for the idea that a mother’s voice promotes her child’s early language-related brain development. It also hints that boosting exposure to maternal speech might ameliorate the language development delays often seen among children born prematurely.

The study, published Oct. 14 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, included 46 preterm infants who were born at just 24 to 31 weeks gestational age. Half received routine exposure to the mother’s voice, while the other half had routine exposure augmented with multiple daily audio recordings of the mother’s voice. Later MRI scans of the infants’ brains suggested significantly greater maturation in the left arcuate fasciculus, a brain circuit known to be involved in speech and language processing.