2-007 - Healthier, Earlier: Understanding and Evaluating “Positive Health” in Early Childhood

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Integrative Statement

While early identification and treatment of health problems – as well as their bioecological risk factors – are critically important, this deficit perspective fails to consider positive health assets that are indicative of children’s overall well-being. Since the majority of children do not face such health challenges, this exclusive focus on the negative categorizes most children as “healthy” because they are not “unwell.” Such an approach misses the broad spectrum of individual differences in children’s well-being and prohibits understanding of whether and how certain children could be doing better or may be at risk for poorer outcomes in the future.

The lack of focus on positive health assets represents a broader issue in the current way health and well-being are conceptualized and measured, as the field lacks 1) a cohesive definition of well-being in general and at particular time points across the life course; 2) consensus on how to best measure this construct; and 3) policies focused on promoting positive assets rather than preventing negative problems. These challenges are amplified by the lack of transdisciplinary work across the fields of developmental psychology, education, pediatrics, and population health, each of which have their own nuanced definition of a construct that is already ill-defined. This conversation roundtable will be moderated by Dr. Rachel Flynn, PhD, Associate Director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences (DevSci), and brings together four panelists representing the research-policy-practice paradigm to discuss conceptual underpinnings of positive health and well-being, innovative measurement strategies, and implications for policy and practice.

Sub Unit

• Health, Growth, Injury

Moderator

• Rachel M Flynn, Northwestern University

Panelists

• Jody Ganiban, George Washington University

• Christina Bethell, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

• Courtney King Blackwell, Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

• Nia Heard-Garris, Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine