An infant?s developing brain is powerfully influenced by positive or negative early experiences.
The brain undergoes its most dramatic development during pregnancy and throughout the first three years of life. Scientific studies have shown that positive engagement between new parents and their infant child is a key to healthy development and long-term well-being.
There are a number of impacts that can adversely influence a child?s early development, including being raised in poverty and not having inadequate access to proper medical care or a proper education. To help our most fragile families, programs such as Health Families were created to promote positive childhood development and strengthen family bonds.
The Coconino County Public Health Services District?s nationally accredited Healthy Families Program focuses on family relationships by promoting healthy parent-child interaction, supporting child development skills, monitoring health and safety practices within families and providing links to community resources in order to improve family self-sufficiency.
The program is available for new mothers with infants less than three months of age and pregnant women. While in the program, a child?s development is continually monitored to ensure they are being raised healthy and have a better chance for leading a more productive adult life.
Healthy Families home visitors support parents with a strength-based and family-centered approach designed to support attachment, bonding and healthy baby outcomes.
The home visitor also works to ensure that the child?s home is sufficiently stimulating to foster learning and healthy development. The parent?s expectations and attitudes toward the infant, as well as their own levels of stress, social isolation, history of childhood abuse, substance abuse and mental illness are critical considerations in the weekly visits conducted by the home visitors.
Of those children enrolled in the program, 95 percent are linked to a medical provider and 90 percent of targeted children are current with their immunizations. Such results promote better health outcomes for children.
Parents have reported significant positive changes in support, problem solving, personal care, use of community resources, home environment, parenting ability and decreased depression. According to the RAND Corporation, research shows that children participating in these programs are better prepared when they enter kindergarten, are more likely to succeed in school, have better performance when they enter the workforce, and are less likely to draw on public resources from welfare to criminal justice.
The CCPHSD Healthy Families Program is voluntary, free and can serve the family until the child turns 5 years old. This relationship-based model is designed to support the parent?s experience, provide continuity for the emerging relationship between parent and baby and ensure healthy outcomes for the child.
Any interested parent who is either pregnant or has an infant under three months of age can contact Nohemi Olivares at 679-7217 or Jerrimi Hofmann 679-7216 at the Coconino County Public Health Services District for more information.
Barbara Wightman is Coconino County Public Health Services District Healthy Families Program Manager. Wightman can be reached at ccphsd@coconino.az.gov.
Article source: http://azdailysun.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/columnists/public-health-and-you-prosperity-sustainability-begin-in-early-childhood/article_72c52a3c-bd6e-5e8a-9186-f8996c1fc67d.html
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