Proclaiming the Decade of the Child

The National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives is developing a initiative to declare the next ten years the DECADE OF THE CHILD, a national research and policy strategy to refocus public policies, systems and the public’s mindset on whole child health and wellbeing.

WholeHealthED has joined a growing list of organizations endorsing the vision and purpose of this initiative.  To see those participating (and to add your own endorsement, organization and/or personal) check out the Decade of the Child site.

The project is led by NPSC president and co-director Diana (Denni) Fishbein PhD and Christina Bethell Phd, MBA, MPH, Director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.

The Initiative’s vision: “… in ten years, infant mortality drops, child poverty is drastically reduced, and parents have the supports they need to nurture their children and avoid child maltreatment. All families have access to quality health and childcare.  Gun violence no longer threatens our children. And every school is a place of learning, support, and opportunity.”

(WholeHealthED would add: “The antecedents of adult chronic illnesses have started to slacken.”)

​The project has identified five primary areas to:

“Refocus public policies and systems on whole-child health and wellbeing and to incentivize a program of research that equips policymakers, practitioners, and communities with a roadmap toward this end.”

• Public Health Must Lead
  • Whole child health and well-being must become the top priority of our public health system

• The Vital Role of Health Care Transformation
  • Health care systems, services, and providers must focus on the whole child and their wellbeing,

• Economic Justice for Children and their Families
  • Businesses and governments must adopt family-friendly policies to lift families out of poverty and create stable environments for raising children

• Education Reform
  • Schools must provide an environment and the tools that meet the diverse needs of the developing child.

• Research on Whole Child Healthy Development and Wellbeing
  • A research agenda across NIH institutes and other funding agencies is needed to focus on the whole child

Support is provided by the NOVA Institute for Health, where Drs. Fishbein and Bethell have recently been appointed Nova Scholars. Nova’s predecessor organization, the Institute for Integrative Health (TIIH), created one of the earliest models for “whole health learning” in its “Mission Thrive Summer” project, a five-week summer program for rising 9^th and 10^th graders in Baltimore schools that included gardening, meal preparation, mindfulness, physical activities, and team building and partnered with the city’s youth summer jobs program.  The project also included rare outcomes research focused on students’ participation in multiple health-supporting activities.  (TIIH was also WholeHealthED’s fiscal sponsor for two years.)

WholeHealthED will work with the project on the questions of Education Reform and Research on Whole Child Wellbeing, which dovetails with our work developing a research agenda for Whole Child Wellbeing that emphasizes upstream prevention outcomes and complements the NIH’s NCCIH Coalition for Whole Person Health.  And continue to make the case that K-12 whole health learning practices strengthen the foundations of public health.