Steps Toward a National Child Health Agenda—
Spotlight on Children’s Health, The Nation’s Wealth: 
Assessing and Improving Child Health
PAS Special Symposium

Chairs: Ruth E.K. Stein, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, NY; and Bonita Stanton, Wayne State University School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI

Children’s Health, the Nation’s Wealth: Assessing and Improving Child Health is a new report of a congressionally mandated committee of the Board of Children Youth and Families of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. The report calls for: a more comprehensive conceptualization of the risk and protective factors that influence child health, a new definition and model of health which is both comprehensive and developmental in its perspective, and for more focus on child health; better data collection; and better linkages across data sets and over time.  It calls for additional efforts to monitor the healthy development of children at the federal, state, and local levels. Many of the changes, especially at the local and state level, could be dramatically affected by advocacy of pediatricians.

This session will summarize some of the key findings and recommendation of the report and have responses from some key federal leaders. 

Participants will include: 
Committee Members:  Ruth E.K. Stein; Bonita Stanton; Neal Halfon;
Leaders of Federal Agencies: Duane Alexander, NICHD; and Peter Van Dyke, MCHB.

Target Audience:  Will appeal to a wide range of individuals concerned with assessment of children’s health and with the ways in which biology, psychology and environment (both physical and social) interact to produce child health as well as those interested in the measurement of child health and necessary steps toward improving it.