Health and Medicine

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 ...

Childhood obesity is a serious health problem that has adverse and long-lasting consequences for individuals, families, and communities. The magnitude of the problem has increased dramatically during the last three decades and, despite some indications of a plateau in this ...

Support for breastfeeding has been a priority of the WIC program since its inception in the 1970s. The Loving Support Makes Breastfeeding Work campaign, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Services launched in 1997, emphasizes key ...

Increasing public investments in health care services for low-income and special needs children and adolescents in the United States have raised questions about whether these efforts improve their health outcomes. Yet it is difficult to assess the general health status ...

Violence against women and children is a serious public health concern, with costs at multiple levels of society. Although violence is a threat to everyone, women and children are particularly susceptible to victimization because they often have fewer rights or ...

Since 1980, childhood obesity rates have more than tripled in the United States. Recent data show that almost one-third of children over 2 years of age are already overweight or obese. While the prevalence of childhood obesity appears to have ...

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federally-funded program designed to provide healthy meals and snacks to children and adults while receiving day care at participating family day care homes, traditional child care centers, afterschool facilities, adult ...

For the past three decades, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a national agenda aimed at improving the health of all Americans over each 10-year span. Under each of these Healthy People initiatives, HHS established health ...

Increased HIV screening may help identify more people with the disease, but there may not be enough resources to provide them with the care they need. The Institute of Medicine's Committee on HIV Screening and Access to Care concludes that ...