Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
National Preventative Health Strategy - Overview
2. Act early and throughout life
Table of contents
- Chair's Foreword
- The purpose of the Strategy; What is in the Strategy?
- The need for urgent, comprehensive, prioritised and sustained action; What will be different because of the Strategy?
- Prevention works; Progressive, staged and comprehensive action
The Strategy – summarised, prioritised and phased- The conceptual framework for the Preventative Health Strategy
Strategic directions- 1. Shared responsibility – developing strategic partnerships
- 2. Act early and throughout life
- 3. Engage communities
- 4. Influence markets and develop connected and coherent policies
- 5. Reduce inequity through targeting disadvantage
- 6. Indigenous Australians – contribute to ‘Close the Gap’
- 7. Refocus primary healthcare towards prevention
- Ensuring effective implementation – the national infrastructure for prevention
- Conclusion – a call to action
- References
- Acknowledgements
‘A life-course perspective is essential for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. This approach starts with maternal health and prenatal nutrition, pregnancy outcomes, exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and child and adolescent health; reaches children at schools, adults at worksites and other settings, and the elderly; and encourages a healthy diet and regular physical activity from youth into old age.’[24]
Interventions that integrate the different dimensions of child development are particularly successful, resulting in sustained improvements in physical, social, emotional and cognitive development, while simultaneously reducing the immediate and future burden of disease, especially for those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged.[25]
Maternal and early childhood services
Access to basic medical care for pregnant women and children can help prevent threats to healthy development, as well as provide early diagnosis and appropriate management as problems emerge.[26]Evidence supporting this approach includes the positive effects of adequate prenatal and early childhood nutrition on healthy brain development, and the developmental benefits for very young children when parental problems such as maternal depression are identified and treated effectively.
Similarly, there is extensive research to indicate that children’s participation in quality early childhood programs can make a substantial difference to cognitive and social outcomes.[27]
Given the extensive research into early childhood, Australia now has an excellent platform from which to reform and develop its service systems for children and their families. Australia currently has a patchwork of existing early childhood and family support services that reflect the legacies of previous policies and earlier understandings about how children grow and develop.
The keys to effective prevention during pregnancy and the early years of life, whether associated with obesity, tobacco, alcohol or other health and social risks, are:
- Early identification of family risk and need, starting in the antenatal period
- Response to need in pregnancy, early years and through parent support
- Monitoring of child health, development and wellbeing
- Service redevelopment and workforce training to meet maternal and childhood needs
Older Australians
Healthy ageing is ‘the process of optimising opportunities for physical, social and mental health to enable older people to take an active part in society without discrimination and to enjoy an independent and good quality of life’.[28] While the potential scope for policy and action is diverse, efforts to tackle and improve healthy ageing have four key areas:[29]- Improved integration in the economy and community
- Better lifestyles
- Adapting health systems to the needs of the elderly
- Attacking the underlying social and environmental factors affecting healthy ageing