523907 research-article2014
RSH0010.1177/1757913914523907GUEST EDITORIALGUEST EDITORIAL
Guest Editorial
Child health There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies – Winston Churchill, 1943 Churchill, 70 years ago, recognised the importance of infant health in ensuring the future health of the nation. Many people since, including neuroscientists, Nobel prize-winning economists and public health intellectuals, have demonstrated the great value of investment in young people. We have used this issue to focus on child public health: ‘The art and science of promoting and protecting health and well-being and preventing disease in infants, children and young people, through the skills and organised efforts of professionals, practitioners, their teams, wider organisations and society as a whole’. This theme has been recently highlighted in the Chief Medical Officer’s report, Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays1 which too has taken a life course approach and laid out an economic and moral case for investing in children and young people’s health and wellbeing. There is a focus on the need to deliver high-quality universal services, adapted to optimise early life chances according to need – known as ‘proportionate universalism’.2 Vitamin, folate and iodine deficiency all come under the spotlight for further attention, as do sport and physical activity and the building of resilience. There are clear recommendations to improve training of the child health workforce and to engage children, young people and their carers in co-designing services to improve outcomes for children as well as reducing unwarranted variations compared to our European neighbours. The age range is now up to 25 years. This is in recognition both of the need to improve services in the transition from paediatrics to adult care, but also due to the fact that the brain is still developing rapidly in the teenage years and beyond. The last has major implications on how we embed health promoting habits for adult life. This is a groundbreaking report which will hold us all to account with an annual conference to review progress on all 24 key recommendations. Please do read the report in detail and think about what you can contribute in your work. Some of the many challenges facing children and young people in the United Kingdom include the rising tide of childhood obesity, child mental health disorders, injury (this last being the most common cause of death in adolescents). In this issue, Rachel Pryke argues that health professionals need to take a clear leadership role and develop skills in the area of measurement, prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.3 Accident or injury? Are we in danger of losing our effective injury prevention as academics argue about terminology, aetiology, strategy and surveillance? Stone4 challenges us to take a more pragmatic approach if we are to be truly effective. Jane Ritchie then eloquently explores the reasons for a lack of recognition of the economic as well as the moral imperative to tackle health inequalities at the beginning of the life course.5 Child and adolescent health service provisions must evolve. Three papers in this issue explore this from a public health perspective. Children under one are the largest population group using accident and emergency services, other than the above 65-years-olds. Heys and colleagues6 carried out a detailed survey in a large London Trust and found current coding systems wanting and inadequately responsive. Young adults are also not engaging well with the current National Health Service (NHS): Hargreaves et al.7 present data showing that we miss many key opportunities in the life course to influence future health behaviours. Rahman and colleagues8 pick up the theme of health inequalities in relation to specialist community child health service provision and describe how services in Derby successfully addressed the ‘inverse care law’. Innovation of services delivery is also addressed in a tantalising paper about the potential for theatre- and arts-based therapy for school children with speech, language and behaviour needs.9 We had many more papers submitted than we were able to publish in this special issue. We hope that future editions of Perspectives in Public Health will continue to promote the public health of children and adolescents throughout the year. Their time is now. Mitch Blair1 and Colin Michie2 in Paediatrics and Child Public Health, Imperial College London 2Paediatrician, Ealing Hospital Integrated Care Organisation
1Reader
References 1 Chief Medical Officer. Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays. Department of Health, October 2013. Available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/255237/2901304_CMO_complete_low_res_accessible.pdf (Last accessed 7th February 2014) 2 The Marmot Review. Fair society, healthy lives: Strategic review of health inequalities in England 3 Pryke R. Child obesity: who is measuring who? And what? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 76–77 4 Stone D. Divided they fall: time to resolve sterile academic disputes that jeopardise child safety efforts. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 74–75 5 Ritchie J. Why should we all focus on health inequalities in the foetus and early childhood? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 78–80 6 Heys M et al. What do we really know about infants who attend Accident and Emergency departments? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 93–100 7 Hargreaves D et al. Distinct patterns of health engagement among adolescents and young adults in England: implications for health services. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 81–84 8 Rahman F et al. Addressing the inverse care law: the role of community paediatric services. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 85–92 9 Barnes J. Drama to promote social and personal well-being in six- and seven-year-olds with communication difficulties: the Speech Bubbles project. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 101–109
72 Perspectives in Public Health l March 2014 Vol 134 No 2 Downloaded from rsh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on April 27, 2015
RSH0010.1177/1757913914523907GUEST EDITORIALGUEST EDITORIAL
Guest Editorial
Child health There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies – Winston Churchill, 1943 Churchill, 70 years ago, recognised the importance of infant health in ensuring the future health of the nation. Many people since, including neuroscientists, Nobel prize-winning economists and public health intellectuals, have demonstrated the great value of investment in young people. We have used this issue to focus on child public health: ‘The art and science of promoting and protecting health and well-being and preventing disease in infants, children and young people, through the skills and organised efforts of professionals, practitioners, their teams, wider organisations and society as a whole’. This theme has been recently highlighted in the Chief Medical Officer’s report, Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays1 which too has taken a life course approach and laid out an economic and moral case for investing in children and young people’s health and wellbeing. There is a focus on the need to deliver high-quality universal services, adapted to optimise early life chances according to need – known as ‘proportionate universalism’.2 Vitamin, folate and iodine deficiency all come under the spotlight for further attention, as do sport and physical activity and the building of resilience. There are clear recommendations to improve training of the child health workforce and to engage children, young people and their carers in co-designing services to improve outcomes for children as well as reducing unwarranted variations compared to our European neighbours. The age range is now up to 25 years. This is in recognition both of the need to improve services in the transition from paediatrics to adult care, but also due to the fact that the brain is still developing rapidly in the teenage years and beyond. The last has major implications on how we embed health promoting habits for adult life. This is a groundbreaking report which will hold us all to account with an annual conference to review progress on all 24 key recommendations. Please do read the report in detail and think about what you can contribute in your work. Some of the many challenges facing children and young people in the United Kingdom include the rising tide of childhood obesity, child mental health disorders, injury (this last being the most common cause of death in adolescents). In this issue, Rachel Pryke argues that health professionals need to take a clear leadership role and develop skills in the area of measurement, prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.3 Accident or injury? Are we in danger of losing our effective injury prevention as academics argue about terminology, aetiology, strategy and surveillance? Stone4 challenges us to take a more pragmatic approach if we are to be truly effective. Jane Ritchie then eloquently explores the reasons for a lack of recognition of the economic as well as the moral imperative to tackle health inequalities at the beginning of the life course.5 Child and adolescent health service provisions must evolve. Three papers in this issue explore this from a public health perspective. Children under one are the largest population group using accident and emergency services, other than the above 65-years-olds. Heys and colleagues6 carried out a detailed survey in a large London Trust and found current coding systems wanting and inadequately responsive. Young adults are also not engaging well with the current National Health Service (NHS): Hargreaves et al.7 present data showing that we miss many key opportunities in the life course to influence future health behaviours. Rahman and colleagues8 pick up the theme of health inequalities in relation to specialist community child health service provision and describe how services in Derby successfully addressed the ‘inverse care law’. Innovation of services delivery is also addressed in a tantalising paper about the potential for theatre- and arts-based therapy for school children with speech, language and behaviour needs.9 We had many more papers submitted than we were able to publish in this special issue. We hope that future editions of Perspectives in Public Health will continue to promote the public health of children and adolescents throughout the year. Their time is now. Mitch Blair1 and Colin Michie2 in Paediatrics and Child Public Health, Imperial College London 2Paediatrician, Ealing Hospital Integrated Care Organisation
1Reader
References 1 Chief Medical Officer. Our Children Deserve Better: Prevention Pays. Department of Health, October 2013. Available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/255237/2901304_CMO_complete_low_res_accessible.pdf (Last accessed 7th February 2014) 2 The Marmot Review. Fair society, healthy lives: Strategic review of health inequalities in England 3 Pryke R. Child obesity: who is measuring who? And what? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 76–77 4 Stone D. Divided they fall: time to resolve sterile academic disputes that jeopardise child safety efforts. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 74–75 5 Ritchie J. Why should we all focus on health inequalities in the foetus and early childhood? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 78–80 6 Heys M et al. What do we really know about infants who attend Accident and Emergency departments? Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 93–100 7 Hargreaves D et al. Distinct patterns of health engagement among adolescents and young adults in England: implications for health services. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 81–84 8 Rahman F et al. Addressing the inverse care law: the role of community paediatric services. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 85–92 9 Barnes J. Drama to promote social and personal well-being in six- and seven-year-olds with communication difficulties: the Speech Bubbles project. Perspectives in Public Health, 2014: 133; pp. 101–109
72 Perspectives in Public Health l March 2014 Vol 134 No 2 Downloaded from rsh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on April 27, 2015
