Study Highlights Integrating Health and Child Development Efforts

A new study, Health Matters: The Role of Health and the Health Sector in Place-Based Initiatives for Young Children, was commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to help program planners and implementers, policy makers and funders to identify and understand a set of innovative and successful multi-sector, place-based initiatives that focus on young children, including a health component and two-way linkages into and out of the health sector. The initiatives reviewed in the study have the potential to serve as models for future work, and as a source of lessons learned and recommendations for those who seek to improve the lives and life course of our nation’s youngest children.

The eight early childhood initiatives, all of which include a strong and active health component, and have successfully integrated efforts across multiple service sectors and settings. The study initiatives include: Children and Families Commission of Orange County (CA), Children’s Board of Hillsborough County (FL), Children’s Futures (Trenton, NJ), First 5 Ventura County (CA), Help Me Grow (CT), Opportunity Knocks (Middletown, CT), Region A Partnership for Children (Western NC), and Westside Infant-Family Network (Los Angeles, CA).

An Executive Summary from the study is also available. The eight-page summary is an excerpt from the full report, and highlights the authors’ findings, conclusions and recommendations for developing these multi-sector approaches to child development place-based initiatives to include health.