Over the last three quarters of a century, international guidelines and regulations have undergone significant changes in how children are problematised as participants in biomedical research. While early guidelines enacted children as vulnerable subjects with diminished autonomy and in need of special protection, beginning in the early 2000s,…

Background: Children are provided with food at school in various ways. In Sweden, free school lunches are provided to all children of compulsory school age. Internationally, Sweden is fairly unique in this sense, which makes the country an important example to study and reflect upon. Objective: This article aims to describe the welfare ideology…

UNICEF Innocenti's Report Card 17 explores how the 43 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and/or the European Union (EU) countries are faring in providing healthy environments for children. Do children have clean water to drink? Do they have good-quality air to breathe? Are their homes free of lead and mould? How many…

This research brief is a new addition to an annual series of five briefs that provide an overview of available evidence shown in the Campbell-UNICEF Mega-Map of the effectiveness of interventions to improve child well-being in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This brief provides an overview of available evidence syntheses that may inform…

We examined the effect on attendance of a truancy court-diversion program for elementary students. Truancy court-diversion programs represent a shift from a law-and-order approach toward a public health model to address school absenteeism. Instead of directly referring parents of truant elementary students to child protection services or juvenile…

The potential spillover effects of the United States' opioid epidemic on children's educational outcomes have received surprisingly little attention from researchers. Accordingly, this study leverages national datasets of county-level opioid prescription rates and public school students' third- to eighth-grade academic achievement to provide the…

In the United States, two approaches have developed to exercise collective influence on how parents raise their children. One is mandatory public intervention in families who have placed their children at risk, exemplified by the child welfare system. The other is voluntary offers of assistance, for example, child abuse prevention services that…

This article discusses why and how the "State of Babies Yearbook: 2019" was developed; identifies the indicators used to examine the well-being of the nation's infants and toddlers; and explains how the indicators align with the ZERO TO THREE policy framework areas of Good Health, Strong Families, and Positive Early Learning Experiences.…

Children's exposure to violence is a national crisis. The high prevalence of exposure to violence in infancy and early childhood has implications for lifelong health and development because early experiences are most influential in shaping the structure and functioning of the brain, the quality of attachments and other relationships, and the…

This practice note will show that resilience among children who have been maltreated is the result of multiple protective factors, including the quality of the services provided to children exposed to chronic adversity. This social ecological perspective of resilience suggests that resilience is a process resulting from interactions between…

Background: Coping with mass emergencies and disasters has become a growing challenge for children, adults and entire communities. Among the population groups affected by disaster, children are particularly vulnerable. Responsible disaster intervention requires both top-down and bottom-up preparation that endorses an ecological perspective, taking…

Over the past decade, the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services (hereinafter referred to as "the Committee") has examined a number of rural issues that touch upon the social determinants of health. The Committee's past work has focused on understanding how conditions and outcomes such as homelessness, childhood…

Military children don't exist in a vacuum; rather, they are embedded in and deeply influenced by their families, neighborhoods, schools, the military itself, and many other interacting systems. To minimize the risks that military children face and maximize their resilience, write Harold Kudler and Colonel Rebecca Porter, we must go beyond…

The Administration's May Revision of the 2012-2013 state budget addresses a $15.7 billion shortfall through funding shifts, cuts, and new revenue sources that place children squarely in harms way. California's kids are already grossly underserved relative to the rest of the nation's children. If the May Revise budget is passed by the Legislature,…

Over one hundred children and some of their parents were infected with HIV in state hospitals in the Chimkent region in Southern Kazakhstan. After this tragedy, the Regional Department of Public Health organized social services for these families and asked the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to provide them with training and…