Taking A Two-Generation Approach to Children’s Health
From infancy, children rely on their parents to learn about and cultivate the habits and skills that will ensure their health. Yet parents’ abilities to provide this care can be inhibited by many factors, from personal health to environmental circumstances such as their job, community or economic status. And when a parent struggles due to any of these factors, children’s health may suffer.
Rather than isolate child care from parent care, a two-generation approach acknowledges their interdependency by addressing the needs of the family holistically. In this interview with Scott D. Berns, MD, MPH, FAAP, President and CEO of the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality (NICHQ), we discuss why a two-generation approach is essential for children’s health, and how we can use it to drive systems-level change.
To add some additional context, we’ve also included a short video from one of our project directors. In it, she shares what it takes to put this approach into action for early childhood initiatives.
Why is a two-generation model so important?
Children’s health cannot be addressed in a vacuum. We need to look at it in the context of the family and caregivers and address what is often referred to as the mother-child or parent-child dyad. We need to recognize that the health of one depends on the health of the other, which means the health of both is a priority. Ultimately, when we view our health systems through the holistic lens of a two-generation model, we can be more agile in our approach to children’s health.
How does that work when NICHQ’s focus is on children’s health?
Consider our national Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Reduce Infant Mortality, which, in theory, might have solely focused on the health of the infant. When we look back at the six core strategies we used to help reduce the national infant mortality rate by 5 percent (read our case study), most focused on the health of the mother or family, such as smoking cessation, birth spacing and addressing social determinants of health. We see that infant health is inextricably tied to maternal health, that we couldn’t address one without addressing the other. During this initiative, we made the most of our resources by capitalizing on the inter-reliant relationship between maternal health systems and children’s health systems.
