Children are the foundation of the United States, and supporting them is a key component of building a successful future. However, millions of children face health inequities that compromise their development, well-being, and long-term outcomes, despite substantial scientific evidence about how those adversities contribute to poor health. Advancements in neurobiological and socio-behavioral science show that critical biological systems develop in the prenatal through early childhood periods, and neurobiological development is extremely responsive to environmental influences during these stages. Consequently, social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors significantly affect a child's health ecosystem and ability to thrive throughout adulthood. Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity builds upon and updates research from Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (2017) and From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000). This report provides a brief overview of stressors that affect childhood development and health, a framework for applying current brain and development science to the real world, a roadmap for implementing tailored interventions, and recommendations about improving systems to better align with our understanding of the significant impact of health equity.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

The health and well-being of children is integral to learning and development but what does it actually mean in practice? This textbook draws on contemporary research on the brain and mind to provide an up-to-date overview of the central aspects of young children’s health and well-being – a key component of the revised EYFS curriculum. Critically engaging with a range of current debates, coverage includes early influences, such as relationships, attachment (attachment theory) and nutrition the role of the brain in health and well-being the enabling environment other issues affecting child development To support students with further reading, reflective and critical thinking it employs: case studies pointers for practice mindful moments discussion questions references to extra readings web links This current, critical and comprehensive course text will provide a solid foundation for students and practitioners on a wide range of early childhood courses, and empower them to support and nurture young children’s health and well-being.

Fact: Health improves learning. Yet nationwide, elementary school students spend twelve times more classroom hours studying history than health. Worse, most kids don't get enough physical activity and over 5 million underage youth vape. In When Are We Going to Teach Health?, Duncan Van Dusen, the CEO of one of the most widely used youth health education programs in the world, makes a novel, sometimes irreverent, case for prioritizing "Whole Child" health and SEL in K-12 schools.  He shows why health drives academic success, what makes teaching health effective, and how to create a school environment that delivers and sustains healthy behavior. Using case studies, tips, and recommended actions, he describes proven youth empowerment and skills-based health education techniques to increase kids' physical activity and healthy food choices and to decrease youth vaping. Half of the proceeds from this book will fund health education in low-income schools.

Written by a team of experts, Health and Wellbeing in Childhood is an essential resource for students, educators and carers.

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings offer an opportunity to provide children with a solid beginning in all areas of their development. The quality and efficacy of these settings depend largely on the individuals within the ECCE workforce. Policy makers need a complete picture of ECCE teachers and caregivers in order to tackle the persistent challenges facing this workforce. The IOM and the National Research Council hosted a workshop to describe the ECCE workforce and outline its parameters. Speakers explored issues in defining and describing the workforce, the marketplace of ECCE, the effects of the workforce on children, the contextual factors that shape the workforce, and opportunities for strengthening ECCE as a profession.

This book attempts to shed light on Mental Health Promotion and Communication both examined as key factors for improving interpersonal relationships in Early Childhood Education. It is a book that promotes common mental health issues and counselling interventions, mental health promotion in pre-school and early childhood context, communication in the school environment between teachers, students and parents. In addition, it discusses common mental health issues that teachers have to deal with in early childhood education and describes counselling interventions in school context as well as strategies for addressing these issues in the school environment.Within this framework, this book actually focuses on the definitions', forms' and activities' of Mental Health Promotion and Communication Impact upon relationships and interactions taken place in everyday Early Childhood Education environment. Moreover, it stresses the importance of cultivating the emotional intelligence of all the members of school community in designing preventive interventions. An emotional intelligent school unit can contribute to the prevention of mental health issues. Emotional intelligence is related to communication skills and communication competence. The development of emotional intelligence and communication competence fosters healthy interpersonal relationships within the school community and reduces emotional and behavioral difficulties. It can also provide parents with ideas for improving their relationship with their children, eliminating, thus, communication problems and negative parenting practices which are associated with mental health problems.This book is aiming at providing readers with practical ideas and suggestions in order to avoid conflict situations that harm their relationships with the valuable others, parents, teachers, students or classmates. In this book special terms and rarely used vocabulary are avoided, so it will be easy to be read not only by professionals, scholars or experts but also by the students, parents and all interested reading public which concerns about relationships' improvement among school community members. Moreover, this book attempts to improve teaching procedure and ameliorate learning effectiveness, keeping classroom in calmness and classroom participants in discipline, according to modern classroom management rules.

This book focuses on improving well-being among young children. It provides a theoretical base explaining why physical activity is important, and offers practical strategies for increasing health and well-being in early childhood settings. It takes ancient wisdom on the mind and body connection, applies it to the youngest children, and supports it with current empirical and international evidence—all with an eye toward improving wellness across the lifespan. The many topics discussed in the book include children’s motor skills, movement, interaction, physical literacy, the use of video games, dog ownership, developmental delays, as well as strategies to improve physical activities in the classroom and broader contexts. In recent years, children’s health has become a priority worldwide. Topics such as “screen time” “sedentary behavior” and “childhood obesity” have become important issues everywhere- in the news, in schools, in community and commercials settings, and among health care providers. Limiting sedentary behavior, increasing physical activity, and maintaining a nutritious diet are three fundamental needs during early childhood. Preschool years are a time when children begin to explore the world around them, and develop more vivid understandings of their surroundings. As this book shows, the early years may be the best time to teach wellness concepts and assist young children in establishing healthy lifestyle habits.

More children born today will survive to adulthood than at any time in history. It is now time to emphasize health and development in middle childhood and adolescence--developmental phases that are critical to health in adulthood and the next generation. Child and Adolescent Health and Development explores the benefits that accrue from sustained and targeted interventions across the first two decades of life. The volume outlines the investment case for effective, costed, and scalable interventions for low-resource settings, emphasizing the cross-sectoral role of education. This evidence base can guide policy makers in prioritizing actions to promote survival, health, cognition, and physical growth throughout childhood and adolescence.

High-quality early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, which benefit not only children and their families but society at large. Despite the great promise of early care and education, it has been financed in such a way that high-quality early care and education have only been available to a fraction of the families needing and desiring it and does little to further develop the early-care-and-education (ECE) workforce. It is neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning that children and families needâ€"a shortfall that further perpetuates and drives inequality. Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education outlines a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kindergarten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compensated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation. The recommendations of this report are based on essential features of child development and early learning, and on principles for high-quality professional practice at the levels of individual practitioners, practice environments, leadership, systems, policies, and resource allocation.