Family-to-family services are emerging as an important adjunctive service to traditional mental health care and a vehicle for improving parent engagement and service use in children's mental health services. In New York State, a growing workforce of Family Peer Advocates (FPA) is delivering family-to-family services. We describe the development…

Research indicates that developing public health programs to modify parenting behaviors could lead to multiple beneficial health outcomes for children. Developing feasible effective parenting programs requires an approach that applies a theory-based model of parenting to a specific domain of child health and engages participant representatives in…

Community participation in program decision-making and implementation is an ideal that community and academic stakeholders aspire to in participatory research. This ideal, however, can be difficult to achieve. We describe lessons learned about community participation from a quasi-experimental trial aimed at reducing the uptake of smoking among…

This very brief article describes the Drug-O-Roma", an evening program which featured envolvement of students, parents and teachers. The program, presented once, was innovative and apparently successful. (CJ)

Describes conceptual framework for mini-series on mental health programming. Model includes five components considered to be critical for comprehensive and effective programming. Components include: action research, ecological perspective of program development, collaborative/participatory approach, prevention to treatment via mental health…

The paper deals with a mental health program designed to treat the 2 1/2 to 5 year old Mexican American child with severe emotional or behavioral problems. Components of the program included a mutual agreement with Parent Child Centers (Headstart) in the community; staff who had expertise to evaluate, diagnose, design, and implement an individual…

The report by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, "Starting Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children," presents a comprehensive strategy for child well-being. Parent education and universal health coverage are but two aspects of an approach that considers the needs of all families. (SLD)

Project Focus on Optimum Development of Children (F.O.O.D.) was initiated in June, 1971, as a demonstration project with child health and development as a key purpose for pupils based in two poverty area schools in Durham, North Carolina; the project this year has served 1300 children. It has provided consultation to teachers and liaison work with…

The Colorado legislature, through passage of the "Colorado Comprehensive Health Education Act," declared that comprehensive health education is an essential element in public education in the state. The first half of this volume reprints Title 22, Article 25, "Colorado Comprehensive Health Education Act" from the Colorado…

Compares the efficacy of a school-based health program to an equivalent home-based program with 2,250 third grade students in Minnesota. Students in the school-based program had gained more knowledge at posttest; however, students in the home-based program evidenced more psychosocial and dietary behavior change. (Author/BJV)

This paper describes two programs for primary grade children designed to increase students' sense of self-esteem by enabling them to have a more successful school experience and to minimize maladaptive behavior related to school stress. The programs were developed as preventative programs to decrease later school problems. A Child-Aide program was…

The social, mental and physical health of children in target Minneapolis Schools has been carefully studied. The intent of this project was to design and implement a program which would improve health. This report discusses the progress of the project for the first year. The project's activities centered around planning, needs assessment and…

If early childhood systems are to be effective at the population level then they must be able to provide family-centered care to all the racial, ethnic and cultural groups that they serve. Despite major policy driven and technological advances in healthcare, health disparities across different races and ethnicities persist. For example, the infant…