Friday Folder #5- Maternal Child Health

Emily Holbrook

Department of Movement Sciences

HS 328- Community Health- Theory, Systems, and Practices

Professor Helen Brown, RDN, MPH

October 6, 2023
 Friday Folder #5- Maternal Child Health

I chose to look at Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home

Visiting Program. This initiative aims to improve health,
prevent abuse and neglect, reduce domestic violence,
increase family education, promote children’s
development and school readiness, and connect families to
needed community resources. This is a voluntary program
for populations at risk for poor maternal outcomes. Home
visitors are trained to help mothers attain the necessary
support and skills needed to raise healthy babies. This
could easily be a job that ff my preview or something I
could refer people to.

This brief talks about the importance of supporting

positive mental health early in childhood and its
impact on mental and physical health outcomes in the
future while drawing associations between the child’s
mental health and the caregivers. The article lays out
the following facts:
- Fostering a responsive relationship between
caregivers and children remain one of the best ways
to prevent ACEs (adverse childhood experiences)
especially since caregiver mental illness is considered
an ACE.
- Children whose mothers report positive
mental health are less likely to develop mental health
and behavioral disorders.
- About 44% of adult depressive disorders
could have been prevented with the elimination of
ACEs
- There is an early childhood mental health
crisis.
Given this information the government laid out a plan
to advance and expand mental health services for
children. The text discusses some examples of
initiatives that have been implemented in various
states to support this. For example, New York and Tennessee have created behavioral health
services for children, while Colorado established the Department
of Early Childhood to support social-emotional development and mental health. SAMHSA's
Infant Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) grant program is also mentioned which focuses
on strengthening caregiver mental health through multigenerational therapy. There is still work
to be done in assessing and improving early childhood mental health at both the state and local
levels. The text suggests expanding child mental health outpatient and crisis services in Medicaid
and gathering data on their effectiveness. They recommend the following actions for state and
territorial agencies:
- Assess state status for early childhood mental health.
- Assess county and township-level trends.
- Expand crisis and outpatient services in medicaid.
o Gather effectiveness data.
- Engage youth and caregivers into the discussion to develop new policies and programs.
Some things I wonder about:
- How are these services expanded?
- How can this efficiently expand in rural areas?
- How do other countries deal with this? How effective is it?
- What is Idaho specifically doing?