Public Health Aspects of Child Well-Being

Reference work entry

Abstract

The enthusiasm to measure child well-being has been facilitated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The focus was until recently on the rights of children to be healthy and to have opportunities to develop to their full capacity, whereas now with the new Convention, we see a move towards a more holistic appreciation of childhood. The desire to ensure that the maximum number of children reach their full potential as adults is also of critical importance to public health practitioners. Particularly from a public health perspective, this has gained more traction, given the increasing evidence that many adult diseases and problems have their origins in causal pathways commencing in early childhood.

The essence of public health is to prevent disease and to enhance health and quality of life within populations. Examples of public health that are well recognized include the promotion of population-wide vaccinations aiming to prevent such things as measles, polio, and smallpox; the control of infectious diseases through sanitation, hygiene, and clean water; and of course prevention campaigns such as antismoking strategies. What is potentially less recognized is the contribution of public health to the improvement of child health and well-being.

An essential component of successful public health practice and planning is the monitoring and ongoing surveillance of health, disease, and disability. There are many reasons why public health practitioners are interested in measuring indicators of child well-being in order to improve the health of both children and adults throughout their life course. They include the need to advocate for public health and other services for children and families, to develop best population health policies, to evaluate changes over time, to identify community factors that enhance child well-being, to study special subpopulations who may have special public health needs, to ascertain whether public health policies are influencing positive developmental pathways and to attempt to identify culture and values that influence child well-being, and to enable international comparisons. However, the ways that we measure child well-being within and between nations still requires considerable thought and international collaboration.

This chapter exemplifies a range of population measures from legislation to health promotion campaigns that continue to improve the health and well-being of children. In addition we review the various determinants of child health and well-being and make the case for population-wide monitoring and surveillance of child well-being. We discuss various ways of collecting and analyzing relevant epidemiological data including record linkage of population data sets and a relatively new index of early child development which is starting to be used internationally.

Keywords

Child Development Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Early Child Development Indigenous Child Early Development Instrument 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

In recognition of Clyde Hertzman: a dear friend, inspirational colleague and supportive mentor.

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© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health ResearchThe University of Western AustraliaCrawleyAustralia

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