Alarming trends continue to challenge the healthy development and wellbeing of children and youth across the United States, with far‑reaching consequences for families, communities, and the nation’s future. Fortunately, decades of largely NIH‑supported research have expanded our understanding of conditions that can undermine healthy child development and wellbeing, and the potential for positive experiences to mitigate the impacts of those adversities. This research has generated evidence‑based strategies that promote resilience, flourishing, and lifelong success by strengthening families, improving access to quality education and health care, and creating more supportive environments for children to thrive.
The challenge now is to determine best practices for integrating effective programs, interventions, services, and policies into our educational, social, health, economic, and physical exosystems across our nation’s communities through further federal investments in a pragmatic program of research and practice. Advancing comprehensive, child health research by focusing on the whole child—considering the full range of experiences and conditions that impact health—will lead to significant advances in our ability to offer every child the opportunity to flourish and succeed throughout life.
This full-day webinar, organized by the Decade of the Child (DOC) Committee, focuses on “Federal Research Investments in Whole Child Health and Wellbeing.” The DOC initiative represents a national research and policy agenda to foster whole child health and wellbeing. We are bringing together NIH leadership and nationally recognized child health experts to examine how federal research investments can further advance an innovative and comprehensive whole‑child approach to health and wellbeing. Speakers will highlight the latest research findings, ongoing studies, and real‑world examples, while exploring opportunities to strengthen implementation, scaling, and sustainment of effective practices, programs, and policies. Participants will gain insight into how a pragmatic research agenda can better support children, families, and child‑ and family‑serving systems nationwide—and help ensure that every child has the opportunity to flourish across the lifespan.
Event sponsors include:
Nova Institute for Health, the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives, the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State University, and the Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina.
