Integrating Healthcare Strategies to Prevent Poverty-Related Disparities in Development and Growth: Addressing Core Outcomes of Early Childhood

This publication proposes a strength-based, whole child approach to target common antecedents (such as poverty) through positive parenting and prevent disparities in both development and growth.

While many families in poverty or with low income would benefit from preventive services related to both development and growth, most successful interventions have tended to focus on only one of these domains. In this manuscript, authors suggest that it may be possible to address both development and growth simultaneously and effectively.

Achieving these goals will require new payment systems that make scaling of primary prevention in healthcare feasible, research funding to assess efficacy/effectiveness and inform implementation, and collaboration among early childhood stakeholders, including clinicians across specialties, scientists across academic disciplines, and policy makers.