It might seem strange to ask whether increasing access to medical care can improve children's health. Yet Lindsey Leininger and Helen Levy begin by pointing out that access to care plays a smaller role than we might think, and that many other factors, such as those discussed elsewhere in this issue, strongly influence children's health.…

The cost and effectiveness of various types and combinations of school-based preventive dental care procedures were assessed in the National Preventive Dentistry Demonstration Program, a four-year study involving more than 20,000 students, from ten schools nationwide. Communal water fluoridation was reaffirmed as the most cost-effective means of…

This briefing paper focuses on collaborations between schools, the health industry (specifically managed care organizations or MCOs), and all other agencies which have vested interests in promoting the health and success of children. The paper presents a vision of health that includes both medical and behavioral components, asserting that health…

This book tells the story of how one school system in a medically underserved community near Chicago conceived and implemented primary care health facilities in two of its schools to serve all the children of the school district. The key to the preventive health care plan is the use of specially trained school nurse practitioners and health aides…

This article explores an approach for better serving the complete health care needs of children, specifically, the efficacy of school-based health centers (SBHCs) to provide a service delivery mechanism capable of functioning as a medical home for children, providing primary care for both their physical and behavioral health care needs. The…

This opening chapter provides an overview of the book, "Healthy Children 2010: Establishing Preventive Services." The article describes the purpose of the work, which is to provide strategies to establish and successfully implement effective prevention services in key socializing settings that powerfully affect the growth an development…

Young people are facing greater risks to their current and future health and social development, as shown by involvement of younger and younger children in risk-taking behaviors. This volume emphasizes developmentally and contextually appropriate prevention service delivery models and identifies state-of-the-art, empirically based strategies to…