ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
If you know, you know. Being a parent is probably one of the hardest jobs around.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: You have this perfect little human, and you think, wow, I made this, and also oh, my gosh, I'm going to mess him up completely (laughter).
SCHMITZ: Suddenly making decisions about another human's health, what they eat, how much they sleep, whether they're getting enough exercise, how much screen time they're getting - all that while facing a near constant stream of advice.
GODOY: There was, like, so much misinformation, like, coming at me and information, and I was trying to figure out, like what to do. I was like a bundle of nerves.
SCHMITZ: That's NPR's health correspondent Maria Godoy describing her own experience becoming a parent. She says that uncertainty helped shape the way she approaches her reporting.
GODOY: I'm also a journalist like, hey, there are answers in, you know - and science can help you answer some of these questions.
SCHMITZ: She often returns to a central question. How can parents make decisions based on the best available evidence without feeling overwhelmed? For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I started by asking her if there was a question from her own life as a parent that sent her looking for answers.
GODOY: There's a rise in childhood myopia, and it was all tied to the pandemic, and my own kid has nearsightedness, and a...
SCHMITZ: Right.
GODOY: ...Lot of it - so, like, digging into the science, what I found out is, like, really, there's a strong tie between exposure to being outdoors and sunlight. Like, there's really strong evidence that for kids to spending 2 hours a day every day outdoors can really prevent them from becoming nearsighted, and it has to do with the way the eye grows.
SCHMITZ: Wow.
GODOY: And so - right, right. And even...
SCHMITZ: I did not know that.
GODOY: Right. No, it's - and it's hugely important. And so when you think about the rise globally of myopia during the pandemic, it's 'cause a lot of kids were spending more time indoors.
SCHMITZ: Right, so you spent a lot of time going out and meeting kids and families as part of your reporting. Let's hear a bit of that.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: (Screaming, laughter).
GODOY: On a sunny weekday afternoon, a group of elementary school-age kids play tag at a park in suburban Silver Spring, Maryland.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Not it.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #3: Not it.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #4: Not it.
GODOY: This outdoor playtime isn't just good fun and exercise. Research shows it's also key to preventing children from developing myopia, or nearsightedness.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: About 50%...
GODOY: So, like, that sort of evidence-based reporting - once they have myopia, you have to do other interventions, but, like, still, spending time outdoors can help slow it down.
SCHMITZ: So, you know, parents today are bombarded with health advice from social media influencers, you name it. When you're reporting a story, how do you decide what information parents actually need versus just filtering out the noise?
GODOY: Yeah, you know, so I asked myself, like, what do you need to know to keep your kids healthy and safe? What are they being exposed to? Is there actionable information that, you know, I can provide that can help you make better decisions as a parent? Or is there, like, misinformation or changing guidance out there that might actually be harmful? So I think of, like, over the last year, the CDC changed its guidance against universally vaccinating all newborns against hep B, right?
SCHMITZ: Right.
GODOY: Instead, it advised to only routinely vaccinate newborns born to women who were positive for hep B or if they were unscreened. But when you look at the evidence, before there was universal recommendation, like, around 18,000 kids a year used to become infected before the age of 10, and half of them got it, like, not from their moms, but from other sources like daycare or sports teams, you know?
SCHMITZ: Oh, interesting.
GODOY: Right - because this virus can live on a surface for up to seven days. And, you know, if you get infected as an infant, there's a lot of risk. Like, once you get infected, there's no cure, and it can raise the risk of things like liver cancer and death. And...
SCHMITZ: Wow.
GODOY: Those risks are really a lot higher, like, for people who are infected as infants. And so knowing that is really important for parents.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, there's a lot of hesitancy now among parents about whether to vaccinate or not. How do you deal with this in your work?
GODOY: You know, this came up when I went to South Carolina earlier in the year and - to report on the large measles outbreak there. And I really went wanting to talk to parents to figure out their views on why they chose to vaccinate or not. And really, when I approach that, I always try to start from the perspective that every parent wants what's best for their child, right? And...
SCHMITZ: Right.
GODOY: They're just doing the best they can with the information they have. And so - and remembering what it was like for me to be a confused, new parent. And so when I talk to people, I try to get that perspective and figure out, where are you getting your information? Where are you getting your misinformation? You know, like, why do you feel how they feel? And a lot of the vaccine-hesitant parents I talked to, even though their conclusions were not science-based, I saw where they were coming from. Like, in one case, it was a woman whose son had sort of a seizure within a week of getting a vaccine.
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MARGARITA DELUCA: Nikko, buckle up, OK?
NIKKO DELUCA: OK.
GODOY: We meet Margarita DeLuca, as she's strapping her 4-year-old son and 6-month-old twins into the car. They're headed to daycare.
DELUCA: They're always asleep by the time I get there. But...
GODOY: Despite living in a region that's experiencing a big measles outbreak, DeLuca has not vaccinated her twins against measles.
DELUCA: I'm not worried about it, but even if they did catch it, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it at home.
GODOY: A big factor in her reluctance to vaccinate comes from personal experience. She got her eldest son, Nikko, vaccinated with routine shots for his first couple of years of life. But about a week after he got his 2-year-old shots, Nikko spiked a fever and experienced a seizure.
DELUCA: He's - like, froze up and then he started convulsing right in my arms - the scariest thing ever.
GODOY: Nikko recovered. Her pediatrician told her, these seizures can happen when toddlers get high fevers, and it's unlikely vaccines played a role. But DeLuca remains dubious.
DELUCA: He hasn't had any seizures since. But he hasn't had no vaccines either. I'm not saying it's from that, but there is a chance.
GODOY: I met another person at a vaccine clinic, and her older son had autism, and so she said she heard that vaccines cause autism, and so she didn't vaccinate her younger children until the measles outbreak came out.
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TRACY HOBBS: They just got their measles, mumps, rubella for the first time today.
GODOY: That's Tracy Hobbs. She just emerged from the mobile clinic with her 5-year-old twins, Joseph and Alice.
HOBBS: Joseph, here now, please.
GODOY: The twins should have gotten their first shots around 12 months of age, but Hobbs decided against it at the time. That's because her oldest child, now 7, was diagnosed with autism shortly after he got his first measles shot.
HOBBS: So we were afraid that if we had gotten the kids the vaccines, that it might actually cause autism. And that's really messed up because what are you supposed to believe?
GODOY: Claims linking the vaccine to autism stem from a 1998 study that has been thoroughly debunked by a large body of research. But this misinformation still circulates widely. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long promoted the discredited claim, and he recently directed the CDC to change its website to say the link cannot be ruled out. Hobbs says it's confusing.
HOBBS: You have one person saying, hey, this could cause the kids to get autism. And then you have, you know, somebody saying, no, you know? I've gotten conflicting information since the day they were born.
GODOY: When the public health messaging there started to focus more on those sort of long-term outcomes of measles infection - so even if your infection is relatively mild - and mild can be miserable, right? Like, kids are sensitive to light.
SCHMITZ: Yeah, of course.
GODOY: They're fevery and achy. There's longer-term repercussions, like the fact that any measles infection will wipe out some part of your immune memory for a couple of years, which means you're vulnerable to things that you've already been exposed to. And so once that science-based messaging came out, she changed her mind and went and vaccinated her kids, right? So it's understanding she was trying to protect her kids from a threat that she thought was there, but once she got the information, she - you know, the right information, she changed her mind.
SCHMITZ: What you just mentioned brings up an interesting point. Like, the idea here that a lot of folks - they might think that they're pretty informed on vaccinations from, like, social media or wherever they're getting their information. But a lot of folks actually don't know what it is to have measles.
GODOY: Oh, right, absolutely because - I mean, and even until recently, a lot of doctors had never seen it. They just sort of heard about it in med school. And, you know, you hear doctors say a lot, it's sort of - the problem is vaccines have fallen victim to their own success because people...
SCHMITZ: Right.
GODOY: ...Forgot how horrible the diseases they prevent can be.
SCHMITZ: At the end of the day, what do you hope parents take away from your reporting?
GODOY: That they should give themselves grace (laughter). But, you know, like, I think...
SCHMITZ: Thank you. I...
GODOY: (Laughter).
SCHMITZ: That's the first thing I wanted you to say, actually.
GODOY: I mean, like, it's hard. You know, it's overwhelming. You're going to make mistakes. Just, you know, do the best you have with the information you have, but do give yourself grace, you know?
SCHMITZ: That is NPR's Maria Godoy. Maria, thank you so much.
GODOY: My pleasure, Rob. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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