This next school year will be different for students and parents alike. While school systems are finalizing details for the 2021-2022 school year, you and your family should also prepare a plan-of-action to stay healthy in and out of class. Mercy Medical Group pediatrician Kimberly Hart, DO has some advice that can ease any concerns you may have about sending your kids back to school in this phase of the pandemic.

Summer for most kids means no school, road trips, and days well-spent in the sun. With that, your child’s body needs to be well-fed and hydrated in order to power through summer activities. For some kids three square meals will do the trick, but for others, snacking can keep them going between meals. Melody Steeples, MPH, RD, with Woodland Clinic, shares some insight on why snacking can be helpful for your child, as well as some advice on how to snack healthily this summer and beyond. Read to the end for a special summer recipe from Melody Steeples!

Aside from nonmelanoma skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the United States and is one of the leading causes of cancer death among men of all races. To give more insight on this disease, Serena Yang-Loudin, MD, a urologist at Dignity Health Mercy Medical Group in Sacramento, shared key information and advice around prostate cancer prevention and treatment.

Prioritizing your health sounds simple enough, but when you mix in a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, working from home and increased isolation it’s understandable how taking care of yourself can get placed on the backburner.

Colorectal cancer (combined colon and rectal cancer) is the third most common cancer in both men and women in the United States. Most colorectal cancer cases happen in people over the age of 50, but according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), cases in adults younger than 50 are on the rise.