Abstract
Penn State’s 19th Annual Symposium on Family Issues incorporated diverse disciplinary perspectives on families and child health to advance understanding of how family processes contribute to health and health inequalities during childhood. This chapter critically examines the symposium’s contribution to understanding family influences on child health via social structural, psychosocial, and physiological pathways and their interactions. Advantages and disadvantages of potential health improvement strategies ranging from broadscale policies to interventions targeting at-risk groups are discussed. Incorporating multiple strategies via a portfolio approach is one means of addressing a wide range of long- and short-term goals relevant to multiple health domains. Directions for future research are considered. Priorities should include more precise conceptualization and measurement of child health and risk factors in large-scale studies along with development and testing of middle-range theories to unravel the complex processes connecting families and child health outcomes. Focusing on these priorities and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations are critical steps for generating the evidence that can be used by policy creators and other key decision makers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Aber, J. L., Bennett, N. G., Conley, D. C., & Li, J. (1997). The effects of poverty on child health and development. Annual Review of Public Health, 18(1), 463–483.
Anderson, J., Hollinger, D., & Conaty, J. (1992, April). Poverty and achievement: Re-examining the relationship between school poverty and student achievement. An examination of eighth grade student achievement using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Francisco, CA. http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED346207.pdf.
Bearman, P. S., Jones, J., & Udry, J. R. (1997). The national longitudinal study of adolescent health: Research design. http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design.
Blumenshine, P., Egerter, S., Barclay, C. J., Cubbin, C., & Braveman, P. A. (2010). Socioeconomic disparities in adverse birth outcomes: A systematic review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 39(3), 263–272.
Braveman, P. (2006). Health disparities and health equity: Concepts and measurement. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 167–194.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1989). Ecological systems theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development (Vol. 6, pp. 187–249). Greenwich, CT: JAI press.
Center for Disease Control & National Center for Health Statistics. (2011). National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Data. Hyattsville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Delva, J., O’Malley, P. M., & Johnston, L. D. (2007). Availability of more-healthy and less-healthy food choices in American schools: A national study of grade, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic differences. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 33(4), S226–S239.
Earls, F., Visher, C. A., & Justice, N. I. O. (1997). Project on human development in Chicago neighborhoods: A research update. Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.
Evans, G. W. (2006). Child development and the physical Environment. Annual Review of Psychology, 57(1), 423–451. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190057.
Grossman, M. (1972). On the concept of health capital and the demand for health. Journal of Political Economy, 80(2), 223–255.
Haas, S. A. (2006). Health selection and the process of social stratification: The effect of childhood health on socioeconomic attainment. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 47(4), 339–354.
Halfon, N., & Newacheck, P. W. (1993). Childhood asthma and poverty: Differential impacts and utilization of health services. Pediatrics, 91(1), 56–61.
Harris, K. M. (2010). An integrative approach to health. Demography, 47(1), 1–22.
Hayward, M. D., & Gorman, B. K. (2004). The long arm of childhood: The influence of early-life social conditions on men’s mortality. Demography, 41(1), 87–107.
Hofferth, S., Davis-Kean, P. E., Davis, J., & Finkelstein, J. (1997). The child development supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics: 1997 user guide. Ann Arbor, MI: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
Kleinman, J. C., & Kessel, S. S. (1987). Racial differences in low birth weight. The New England Journal of Medicine, 317(12), 749–753.
Leviton, L. C. (2008). Children’s healthy weight and the school environment. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 615(1), 38–55.
Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. (1995). Social conditions as fundamental causes of disease. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 35, 80–94.
Marmot, M. G., Stansfeld, S., Patel, C., North, F., Head, J., White, I., et al. (1991). Health inequalities among British civil servants: The Whitehall II study. Lancet, 337(8754), 1387–1393.
Masten, A. S., & Cicchetti, D. (2010). Developmental cascades. Development and Psychopathology, 22(3), 491–495.
McConnell, R., Berhane, K., Gilliland, F., Molitor, J., Thomas, D., Lurmann, F., et al. (2003). Prospective study of air pollution and bronchitic symptoms in children with asthma. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 168(7), 790.
McGowan, H. M., Nix, R. L., Murphy, S. A., & Bierman, K. L. (2010). Investigating the impact of selection bias in dose–response analyses of preventive interventions. Prevention Science, 11(3), 239–251. doi:10.1007/s11121-010-0169-2.
McLeod, J. D., & Shanahan, M. J. (1993). Poverty, parenting, and children’s mental health. American Sociological Review, 58(3), 351–366.
Mrug, S., Loosier, P. S., & Windle, M. (2008). Violence exposure across multiple contexts: Individual and joint effects on adjustment. The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78(1), 70–84.
Muennig, P. (2009). The social costs of childhood lead exposure in the post-lead regulation era. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 163(9), 844.
Palloni, A. (2006). Reproducing inequalities: Luck, wallets, and the enduring effects of childhood health. Demography, 43(4), 587–615.
Parke, R. D. (2004). Development in the family. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 365–399.
Parker, J. D., Schoendorf, K. C., & Kiely, J. L. (1994). Associations between measures of socioeconomic status and low birth weight, small for gestational age, and premature delivery in the United States. Annals of Epidemiology, 4(4), 271–278.
Perry-Jenkins, M., Repetti, R. L., & Crouter, A. C. (2000). Work and family in the 1990s. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62(4), 981–998.
Peters, J. M., Avol, E., Navidi, W., London, S. J., Gauderman, W. J., Lurmann, F., et al. (1999). A study of twelve Southern California communities with differing levels and types of air pollution. I. Prevalence of respiratory morbidity. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 159(3), 760.
Peterson, C., Sastry, N., Pebley, A., Ghosh-Dastidar, B., Williamson, S., & Lara-Cinisomo, S. (2004). The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey: Codebook. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. DRU-2400/2-1-LAFANS. http://www.rand.org/pubs/drafts/DRU2400z2-1.html.
Reynolds, A. J., Temple, J. A., Robertson, D. L., & Mann, E. A. (2002). Age 21 cost-benefit analysis of the Title I Chicago Child–parent Centers. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(4), 267–303.
Sastry, N., & Pebley, A. R. (2003). Neighborhood and family effects on children’s health in Los Angeles. California Center for Population Research On-Line Working Paper Series, CCPR-034-04.
Spoth, R., Redmond, C., Hockaday, C., & Shin, C. Y. (1996). Barriers to participation in family skills preventive interventions and their evaluations: A replication and extension. Family Relations, 45(3), 247–254.
Stein, J., Schettler, T., Wallinga, D., & Valenti, M. (2002). In harm’s way: Toxic threats to child development. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 23, S13.
Tonry, M., Ohlin, L. E., & Farrington, D. P. (1991). Human development and criminal behavior: New ways of advancing knowledge. New York, NY: Springer.
Wagstaff, A., Bustreo, F., Bryce, J., & Claeson, M. (2004). Child health: Reaching the poor. American Journal of Public Health, 94(5), 726.
Whitaker, R. C., & Orzol, S. M. (2006). Obesity among US urban preschool children: Relationships to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 160(6), 578.
Wilkinson, R., & Marmot, M. (2003). Social determinants of health: The solid facts (2nd ed.). Denmark: World Health Organization.
Willson, A. E., Shuey, K. M., & Elder, G. H., Jr. (2007). Cumulative advantage processes as mechanisms of inequality in life course health1. The American Journal of Sociology, 112(6), 1886–1924.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nau, C., Heckert, J. (2013). Integrating Perspectives on Child Health. In: Landale, N., McHale, S., Booth, A. (eds) Families and Child Health. National Symposium on Family Issues. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6194-4_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6194-4_16
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6193-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6194-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)