Every moment counts (EMC) is a multi-tiered mental health promotion initiative designed to build the capacity of practitioners to address the mental health needs of children and youth in school settings. This study evaluated the impact and cultural relevance of EMC workshops in supporting practitioners to apply a public health approach to…

Background: Six thousand children are hospitalized each year in New Zealand with housing sensitive conditions, and 86.2% of these children are rehospitalized during childhood. The Healthy Homes Initiative, set up by the Ministry of Health, and implemented in Wellington through Well Homes, carries out housing assessments and delivers a range of…

Inclusive education communities and systems are based on how teachers can use their knowledge, skills, and social awareness to meet the increasingly diverse needs of the learners within their classrooms. International research suggests that teachers often feel underprepared to meet the needs of all learners and are largely ill-prepared to know how…

As the COVID-19 virus has spread worldwide, much attention has been paid to its impact on the health and wellbeing of adults, with less attention to how the virus has impacted on young children. This article draws on documentation and video data from a kindergarten in Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses the working theories of 4 year-old children…

Literacy success lays the foundation for children's later educational, health, and well-being outcomes. Thus, early identification of literacy need is vital. Using data from New Zealand's national preschool health screening program for fiscal years 2010/2011-2014/2015, demographic and health variables from 255,090 children aged 4 years were…

In contemporary times, corporate philanthropy is positioned as an effective means to 'solve' a variety of social problems. Childhood obesity is one such 'problem' that has captured the interests of schools, corporations, industry groups and a number of 'not-for-profit' players. In this paper, I critically examine how the private sector uses the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which children and young people are being positioned as change agents for families through school health promotion initiatives in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach: The paper maps and describes the kinds of policies and initiatives that directly or indirectly regard children as…

In the Hebrew story, King Solomon was asked to decide which of two "harlots" was the mother of an infant. His proposal to divide the baby between them revealed who could recognise the child's best interests. This ancient story has resonance for early childhood education, for although our curriculum holds the wellbeing of children at its…

In contemporary times, organisations across all sectors of society have been encouraged to collaborate and be 'part of the solution' to childhood obesity. This has led to a proliferation of anti-obesity/healthy lifestyles programmes that are funded, devised and implemented by private sector players (e.g. McDonald's, Nestlé) in schools across the…

Research Findings: Optimal sleep is important for children's learning and development. "Sleep disordered breathing" (SDB) refers to a spectrum of conditions from simple snoring to obstructive sleep apnea that is common in childhood and interrupts sleep. We examined pathways between SDB and academic performance of children (N = 163, M…

The policies and practices of early childhood teaching in Aotearoa New Zealand have been an ongoing site of political, economic, social and cultural contestation. Competing values and beliefs regarding experiences of both the child and the teacher have been central to the contesting. Helen May (2001, 2009) tracks these tensions through the waxing…

Normalising practices as a tool for controlling the body and bodily processes have been well-documented using Foucault's theories, including debates around breastfeeding. In this article we explore how the ideas of "normalisation" of the bottle-feeding culture of infants in New Zealand early childhood settings has become the accepted…

In New Zealand and Japan, despite health education on food, exercise, and hygiene, children's health is an important concern in preschools. This study investigated the relationship between children's health and health education in New Zealand and Japan using a qualitative interpretative descriptive design method and semi-structured interviews with…

Adverse parenting practices, including child maltreatment, interfere with children's adjustment and life outcomes. In this article, Ronald Prinz describes the Triple P--Positive Parenting Program, designed to improve parenting population-wide. Prinz offers four main reasons to take a population approach. First, official records grossly…

In New Zealand (NZ) and Japan, despite comprehensive national health and physical education (HPE) curriculums in schools, there continues to be significant health issues for children. A qualitative interpretative descriptive research method was used to compare how primary school teachers taught HPE in both countries. In NZ, there is some freedom…