Welcome to KidsMeds

About KidsMeds

KidsMeds is dedicated to providing accurate pediatric drug information. Have you ever been unable to find information about your child’s medication? Chances are that your local pharmacist does not specialize in pediatric pharmacy.

Also, nearly 80% of medicine marketed in the Unites States do not carry recommendations for use in children. The ramification, of course, is that children are placed at higher risk of complications related to medication therapy.

Clearly, more pediatric drug research is needed to prevent med errors in children. However, there exists an immediate problem. How do we care for the health of these children in the absence of adequate information for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, clinicians, and parents?

Realizing that there was a need to provide concerned parents with accurate information about their children’s medicine, Heidi Belden, PharmD originally founded KidsMeds in 1998. Ten years later, KidsMeds and the Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group joined forces to manage and operate the website. By coordinating efforts, KidsMeds is able to bring together the talents of over 1,000 pediatric pharmacists to provide the latest information regarding pediatric medications.

The Pediatric Pharmacy Association (PPA) is a professional Association dedicated to helping children and their families. Our mission is to promote safe and effective medication use in children through communication, education, and research. Our members are the pediatric medication experts and are equipped with the training and knowledge to help. Our members have advanced training in the areas of pediatric pharmacy, pharmacology, and therapeutics.

In keeping with the KidsMeds original concept, the purpose of this website is to disseminate information and help you sift through the plethora of information (and misinformation) available today on the web about medication therapy.

Kids and Meds

There are 74.2 million children in the United States, most of whom receive drug therapy sometime during their childhood. Whether this drug therapy is an antibiotic for infection, an antipyretic for fever, an antiseizure drug, an anticancer drug, or any other type of drug, there is a need for knowledge about how children absorb, metabolize, and eliminate these drugs to facilitate their optimal use.

However, with many drugs, such detailed information in children is not available. Nearly 80% of medications marketed in the United States carry no recommendation for use in children. The development of new drugs over the past three decades has revolutionized the therapeutic arsenal available for today’s clinician. However, children have not fully benefited from these therapeutic advances. Most children are prescribed drugs “off-label” by the doctor. Although medications continue to be used extensively in the pediatric population, our knowledge regarding their use remains limited. Childhood is a period during which there are significant maturational changes in the processes that govern drug disposition and effect.

The ramification is that children are placed at significant risk for therapeutic misadventures when prescribed a drug that has not been adequately tested. In other words, adverse drug effects can occur more easily in children due to lack of adequate testing. Several practical problems discourage the testing of drugs in children. First, the principal organs responsible for drug metabolism and elimination undergo significant developmental changes necessitating the study of children in multiple age and size ranges. Secondly, ethical concerns exist regarding the administration of unproven drugs to children. Third, the high cost and difficult technical aspects of completing studies in children discourage completing the necessary studies. Finally, there exists a lack of trained investigators expert in the conduct of pediatric clinical pharmacology research. The combination of these problems put the pediatric health care provider at a significant disadvantage when caring for children.   While today’s prescription medicines are complex, powerful agents that should be used carefully to ensure a faster recovery and better health, your pharmacist is an excellent resource for answers to your medication-related questions.

​We hope this website is a helpful go-to guide for you and your family.