Family structure and multiple domains of child well-being in the United States: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: We examine the association between family structure and children's health care utilization, barriers to health care access, health, and schooling and cognitive outcomes and assess whether socioeconomic status (SES) accounts for those family structure differences. We advance prior research by focusing on understudied but increasingly common family structures including single father families and five different family structures that include grandparents. METHODS: Our data on United States children aged birth through 17 (unweighted N = 198,864) come from the 1997-2013 waves of the National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative, publicly available, household-based sample. We examine 17 outcomes across nine family structures, including married couple, cohabiting couple, single mother, and single father families, with and without grandparents, and skipped-generation families that include children and grandparents but not parents. The SES measures include family income, home ownership, and parents' or grandparents' (depending on who is in the household) employment and education. RESULTS: Compared to children living with married couples, children in single mother, extended single mother, and cohabiting couple families average poorer outcomes, but children in single father families sometimes average better health outcomes. The presence of grandparents in single parent, cohabiting, or married couple families does not buffer children from adverse outcomes. SES only partially explains family structure disparities in children's well-being. CONCLUSIONS: All non-married couple family structures are associated with some adverse outcomes among children, but the degree of disadvantage varies across family structures. Efforts to understand and improve child well-being might be most effective if they recognize the increasing diversity in children's living arrangements.

Disparities in Newborn Hearing Screening Outcomes in the United States From 2007 to 2017.

OBJECTIVE: Establishing timely language intervention for children who are deaf or hard of hearing is crucial for their cognitive and language development. Newborn hearing screening (NBHS) programs are now commonplace, but disparities in receipt of support may exist. This study seeks to investigate if states with more diverse populations, less educated mothers, fewer resources, and no legislative mandate of screening have lower rates of milestone completion. STUDY DESIGN: This is a cross-sectional study. SETTING: Data describing screening, identification, and intervention rates from individual state NBHS programs were aggregated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2007 to 2017. METHODS: Regression models were fitted to assess associations between these outcomes and state demographic and policy variables. Forest plots from meta-analyses were used to obtain nationwide pooled estimates of the relative risk (RR) of maternal predictors from individual state data. RESULTS: State averages of maternal education level, age, and race/ethnicity were found to be significantly associated with various outcomes. The presence of program funding and legislative state mandate were associated with multiple improved outcomes. Meta-analyses identified increased RRs for most outcomes based on maternal education less than high school, age 19 and below, and non-White race/ethnicity. CONCLUSION: There is evidence of disparities in access to and timing of screening, identification testing, and intervention by various demographic and policy factors at the state level. More research is needed to further explore these relationships and determine how to address existing disparities in order to provide more equitable care.

Administrative record linkage as a tool for public health research.

Linked administrative databases offer a powerful resource for studying important public health issues. Methods developed and implemented in several jurisdictions across the globe have achieved high-quality linkages for conducting health and social research without compromising confidentiality. Key data available for linkage include health services utilization, population registries, place of residence, family ties, educational outcomes, and use of social services. Linking events for large populations of individuals across disparate sources and over time permits a range of research possibilities, including the capacity to study low-prevalence exposure-disease associations, multiple outcome domains within the same cohort of individuals, service utilization and chronic disease patterns, and life course and transgenerational transmission of health. Limited information on variables such as individual-level socioeconomic status (SES) and social supports is outweighed by strengths that include comprehensive follow-up, continuous data collection, objective measures, and relatively low expense. Ever advancing methodologies and data holdings guarantee that research using linked administrative databases will make increasingly important contributions to public health research.

Neighborhood Poverty and Child Health: Investing in Communities to Improve Childhood Opportunity and Well-Being.

If ZIP code is more important than genetic code in determining one's health and opportunities, how can pediatricians enable healthy and opportunity-rich environments for all children? This paper introduces a broad network of organizations, policies, and financial resources that are working to improve ZIP codes by tackling poverty at the neighborhood level. The mission-driven US community development sector began with the War on Poverty in the 1960s and 70s and comprises a network of finance, real estate, and community-based organizations working together to overturn decades of racially motivated disinvestment, revitalize persistently marginalized, low-income communities, and enhance the lives of the people who live in them. Across the country, thousands of community development corporations, community development financial institutions, affordable housing developers, and regulated for-profit banks together invest over $300 billion annually in affordable housing, childcare and early learning facilities, recreation centers, community clinics, grocery stores, small businesses, and financial services for low-income families and neighborhoods. We present successful examples of community development efforts targeting child health and opportunity and highlight opportunities for pediatricians to advise, collaborate, and partner in order to accelerate and maximize the impact of billions of dollars invested in support of healthier neighborhoods where all children can grow and thrive.

Rethinking what is important: biologic versus social predictors of childhood health and educational outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Social risk factors are often less vigorously pursued in clinical assessments of infant risk than are biologic risk factors. We examined the relative importance of early social and biologic risk factors in predicting poor health and educational outcomes in children. METHODS: The study was composed of all infants born in Winnipeg, Canada, during April-December 1984, who were followed up until age 19 years (n = 4667). Predictors were 3 routinely assessed biologic risks (birth weight, gestational age, and Apgar score) and 3 prominent social factors (mother's age, parent marital status, and socioeconomic status). Outcomes were childhood hospitalization and passage of a required high school examination. Analyses included logistic regression, measures of accuracy, and population attributable risk percent (PAR%). RESULTS: Biologic and social risk factors were associated with similarly steep poor outcomes gradients. Social risk factors had similar, and in some cases stronger, measures of association and accuracy. Using biologic risk criteria alone misclassified as low-risk 65% of cohort children who had high rates of later hospitalization and examination failure. PAR% associated with social risk factors exceeded biologic risk factors in most cases (eg, hospitalization PAR% = 4.4 for offspring of teen mothers vs. 1.7 for low birth weight). CONCLUSIONS: In a population-based sample of infants followed-up through adolescence, early social risk factors were as threatening as, and more common than, routinely documented biologic risks-frequently identifying otherwise-unrecognized at-risk children. These findings together suggest that rigorous evaluation of social factors should be made a routine part of clinical assessment to more comprehensively and accurately identify infants at risk for later serious health problems and academic failure.

Socio-economic inequities in children's injury rates: has the gradient changed over time?

INTRODUCTION: Changing socio-economic gradients in adult health over time have been documented, but little research has investigated temporal changes in child health gradients. Childhood hospitalizations for injury have fallen over the last two decades; whether the socio-economic gradient in childhood injury has changed is unknown. METHODS: Population-based hospital discharge data were used to calculate rates of hospitalization for injury from 1986/87 through 2005/06 for all children under 20 years of age in Manitoba (average yearly number of hospitalizations = 326,357). Information on socio-economic status (SES) came from area-level census data and was assigned by residential postal codes. Generalized linear models with generalized estimating equations were employed to describe the relation between SES and injury rates and whether this relation changed over time. All-cause injuries were examined as well as injuries for motor vehicle collisions (MVCs), other vehicle injuries, self-inflicted injuries, assault, poisoning, injuries caused by machinery, sports injuries and falls. RESULTS: Injury hospitalizations for children decreased steadily over the study period, from 1.07% to 0.51%. SES significantly predicted injury hospitalizations (p < 0.0001), children with lower SES showing higher rates. A significant SES by year interaction (p < 0.0001) indicated that the SES gradient for injury hospitalizations increased over time. Analysis by type of injury found a significant SES by year interaction for MVCs, self-inflicted injuries and falls; for MVCs and self-inflicted injuries the pattern (increasing SES gradient) was similar to that of hospitalization for all-cause injury. The pattern for falls was inconsistent. CONCLUSION: Despite the overall drop in injury hospitalizations over time, the SES gradient in hospitalized injury rates has increased.

Exploring consensus across sectors for measuring the social determinants of health.

The importance of social determinants of health (SDOH) -such as affordable housing, stable employment, consistent transportation, healthy food access, and quality schools-is well-established as a key component of chronic disease prevention and health promotion. Increasingly, practitioners within and beyond public health are collaborating to implement such strategies, part of which involves measuring their impacts over time. This study assesses the current state of SDOH measurement across sectors by systematically identifying how many and what kinds of tools exist and whether there is consensus around SDOH categories and indicators selected. This study revealed that while numerous SDOH measurement resources exist, relatively few are tools for measuring the SDOH. Although the SDOH categories being measured could be readily summarized across tools, there was wide variation in the particular SDOH categories included in each tool. Finally, remarkably little consensus exists for the specific indicators used to measure SDOH categories. While complete consensus across tools may not be possible, learning how different sectors measure SDOH and more systematically aligning SDOH categories and indicators being measured will enable greater collaboration and deepen the impacts of place-based interventions to improve community health and well-being.

Neighborhood Child Opportunity and Individual-Level Pediatric Acute Care Use and Diagnoses.

: media-1vid110.1542/5751513300001PEDS-VA_2017-2309Video Abstract OBJECTIVES: Although health care providers and systems are increasingly interested in patients' nonmedical needs as a means to improve health, little is known about neighborhood conditions that contribute to child health problems. We sought to determine if a novel, publicly available measure of neighborhood context, the Child Opportunity Index, was associated with pediatric acute care visit frequency and diagnoses. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included San Francisco residents <18 years of age with an emergency department and/or urgent care visit to any of 3 medical systems (N = 47 175) between 2007 and 2011. Hot-spot analysis was used to compare the spatial distribution of neighborhood child opportunity and income. Generalized estimating equation logistic regression models were used to examine independent associations between neighborhood child opportunity and frequent acute care use (≥4 visits per year) and diagnosis group after adjusting for neighborhood income and patient age, sex, race and/or ethnicity, payer, and health system. RESULTS: Neighborhood child opportunity and income had distinct spatial distributions, and we identified different clusters of high- and low-risk neighborhoods. Children living in the lowest opportunity neighborhoods had significantly greater odds of ≥4 acute care visits per year (odds ratio 1.33; 95% confidence interval 1.03-1.73) compared with those in the highest opportunity neighborhoods. Neighborhood child opportunity was negatively associated with visits for respiratory conditions, asthma, assault, and ambulatory care-sensitive conditions but positively associated with injury-related visits. CONCLUSIONS: The Child Opportunity Index could be an effective tool for identifying neighborhood factors beyond income related to child health.

An Unconditional Prenatal Income Supplement Reduces Population Inequities In Birth Outcomes.

The Commission on Social Determinants of Health, sponsored by the World Health Organization, has identified measuring health inequities and evaluating interventions to reduce them as important priorities. We examined whether an unconditional prenatal income supplement for low-income women was associated with reduced population-level inequities in birth outcomes. We identified all mother-newborn pairs from the period 2003-10 in Manitoba, Canada, and divided them into the following three groups: low income exposed (received the supplement); low income unexposed (did not receive the supplement); and not low income unexposed (ineligible for the supplement). We measured inequities in low-birthweight births, preterm births, and breast-feeding initiation among these groups. The findings indicated that the socioeconomic gap in birth outcomes between low-income and other women was significantly smaller when the low-income women received the income supplement than when they did not. The prenatal income supplement may be an important driver in attaining population-level equity in birth outcomes; its success could inform strategies seeking to improve maternal and child health.

Provider recognition of psychosocial problems in low-income Latino children.

The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of identification of psychosocial problems in Latino children by primary care providers (PCPs). This was a cross-sectional study of 269 low-socioeconomic status (SES), Latino children, ages 2-16 years, seen at a community clinic for well-child care. Primary care providers completed a World Health Organization checklist, which organized provider assessment of child psychosocial problems. Clinicians identified one or more psychosocial problems in 39.8% of children. Clinicians recognized only 20% of children with clinically significant aggression symptoms, 18% of children with clinically significant attention/hyperactivity symptoms, and none (0%) of the children with clinically significant anxiety/depression symptoms with clinical data from parent-completed child-behavior checklists used as the benchmark. Despite high rates of identification of psychosocial problems in a low-SES, Latino population, PCPs still miss symptoms of mental health difficulties, especially anxiety and depression. Since symptoms of anxiety and depression are likely to be more pronounced in Latino populations, there is a continued need for improvement in detection of mental health concerns among these children.

Unconditional Prenatal Income Supplement and Birth Outcomes.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Perinatal outcomes have improved in developed countries but remain poor for disadvantaged populations. We examined whether an unconditional income supplement to low-income pregnant women was associated with improved birth outcomes. METHODS: This study included all mother-newborn pairs (2003-2010) in Manitoba, Canada, where the mother received prenatal social assistance, the infant was born in the hospital, and the pair had a risk screen (N = 14 591). Low-income women who received the income supplement (Healthy Baby Prenatal Benefit [HBPB], n = 10 738) were compared with low-income women who did not receive HBPB (n = 3853) on the following factors: low birth weight, preterm, small and large for gestational age, Apgar score, breastfeeding initiation, neonatal readmission, and newborn hospital length of stay (LOS). Covariates from risk screens were used to develop propensity scores and to balance differences between groups in regression models; γ sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess sensitivity to unmeasured confounding. Population-attributable and preventable fractions were calculated. RESULTS: HBPB was associated with reductions in low birth weight (aRR, 0.71 [95% CI, 0.63-0.81]), preterm births (aRR, 0.76 [95% CI, 0.69-0.84]) and small for gestational age births (aRR, 0.90 [95% CI, 0.81-0.99]) and increases in breastfeeding (aRR, 1.06 [95% CI, 1.03-1.09]) and large for gestational age births (aRR, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.05-1.23]). For vaginal births, HBPB was associated with shortened LOS (weighted mean, 2.86; P < .0001). Results for breastfeeding, low birth weight, preterm birth, and LOS were robust to unmeasured confounding. Reductions of 21% (95% CI, 13.6-28.3) for low birth weight births and 17.5% (95% CI, 11.2-23.8) for preterm births were associated with HBPB. CONCLUSIONS: Receipt of an unconditional prenatal income supplement was associated with positive outcomes. Placing conditions on income supplements may not be necessary to promote prenatal and perinatal health.

Neighborhood adversity, child health, and the role for community development.

Despite medical advances, childhood health and well-being have not been broadly achieved due to rising chronic diseases and conditions related to child poverty. Family and neighborhood living conditions can have lasting consequences for health, with community adversity affecting health outcomes in significant part through stress response and increased allostatic load. Exposure to this "toxic stress" influences gene expression and brain development with direct and indirect negative consequences for health. Ensuring healthy child development requires improving conditions in distressed, high-poverty neighborhoods by reducing children's exposure to neighborhood stressors and supporting good family and caregiver functioning. The community development industry invests more than $200 billion annually in low-income neighborhoods, with the goal of improving living conditions for residents. The most impactful investments have transformed neighborhoods by integrating across sectors to address both the built environment and the social and service environment. By addressing many facets of the social determinants of health at once, these efforts suggest substantial results for children, but health outcomes generally have not been considered or evaluated. Increased partnership between the health sector and community development can bring health outcomes explicitly into focus for community development investments, help optimize intervention strategies for health, and provide natural experiments to build the evidence base for holistic interventions for disadvantaged children. The problems and potential solutions are beyond the scope of practicing pediatricians, but the community development sector stands ready to engage in shared efforts to improve the health and development of our most at-risk children.

Use of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist in a low-income, Mexican American population.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the usefulness of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) in identifying behavioral problems in low-income, Mexican American children. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study design was used to examine the PSC as a screening test, with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) as the criterion standard. SETTING: The study was conducted at a health center in a diverse low-income community. Patients Eligible patients were children and adolescents, 4 to 16 years of age, who were seen for nonemergent, well-child care. Of 253 eligible children during a 9-month study period, 210 agreed to participate in the study. There was a 100% completion rate of the questionnaires. The average age of the children was 7.5 years, and 45% were female. Ninety-five percent of patients were of Hispanic descent (Mexican American); 86% of families spoke only Spanish. Socioeconomic status was low (more than three fourths of families earned <$20 000 annually). RESULTS: The CBCL Total scale determined that 27 (13%) of the children had clinical levels of behavioral problems. With a cutoff score of 24, the PSC screened 2 (1%) of the 210 children as positive for behavioral problems. Using the CBCL as the criterion standard, the PSC sensitivity was 7.4%, and the specificity was 100%. Receiver operator characteristic analysis determined that a PSC cutoff score of 12 most correctly classified children with and without behavioral problems (sensitivity, 0.74; specificity, 0.94). CONCLUSIONS: When using the PSC, a new cutoff score of 12 for clinical significance should be considered if screening low-income, Mexican American children for behavioral problems. Additional study is indicated to determine the causes of the PSC's apparently lower sensitivity in Mexican American populations.

A framework to extend community development measurement to health and well-being.

Measurement can help community development and health practitioners align and optimize their investments and leverage additional resources to achieve shared goals. However, there is no clear guidance for reconciling the established systems for measuring community development activities and outputs-such as housing units built, jobs created, and people served-with the outcomes and impacts of health. We therefore reviewed community development measurement systems-encompassing assessment, monitoring, evaluation, and standards-and identified strategies for using those systems to support health in community development decision making. We highlight promising innovations by organizations such as the Reinvestment Fund and NeighborWorks America and place these in an ecosystem framework to illustrate opportunities for shared measurement. We then discuss policies and processes to build the ecosystem's infrastructure, balance stakeholders' priorities within the ecosystem, and use it to drive investments in health.

San Francisco children living in redeveloped public housing used acute services less than children in older public housing.

Understanding the links between housing and health is increasingly important. Poor housing quality is a predictor of poor health and developmental problems in low-income children. We examined associations between public housing type and recurrent pediatric emergency and urgent care hospital visits. Children ages 0-18 with public insurance who sought emergency care from any of three large medical systems in San Francisco were categorized by whether they lived in public housing redeveloped through the federal HOPE VI program, nonredeveloped public housing, or nonpublic housing in a census tract that also contained public housing. After we adjusted for potential confounding characteristics, we found that children living in nonredeveloped public housing were 39 percent more likely to have one or more repeat visits within one year for acute health care services unrelated to the initial visit, compared to children who lived in redeveloped HOPE VI housing. We observed no differences in repeat visits between children in redeveloped HOPE VI housing and those in nonpublic housing. These findings support the continued redevelopment of public housing as a means of both improving the health of vulnerable high-risk children from low-income neighborhoods and reducing health care costs.

Building healthy communities: establishing health and wellness metrics for use within the real estate industry.

It is increasingly well recognized that the design and operation of the communities in which people live, work, learn, and play significantly influence their health. However, within the real estate industry, the health impacts of transportation, community development, and other construction projects, both positive and negative, continue to operate largely as economic externalities: unmeasured, unregulated, and for the most part unconsidered. This lack of transparency limits communities' ability to efficiently advocate for real estate investment that best promotes their health and well-being. It also limits market incentives for innovation within the real estate industry by making it more difficult for developers that successfully target health behaviors and outcomes in their projects to differentiate themselves competitively. In this article we outline the need for actionable, community-relevant, practical, and valuable metrics jointly developed by the health care and real estate sectors to better evaluate and optimize the "performance" of real estate development projects from a population health perspective. Potential templates for implementation, including the successful introduction of sustainability metrics by the green building movement, and preliminary data from selected case-study projects are also discussed.

Administrative data linkage as a tool for child maltreatment research.

Linking administrative data records for the same individuals across services and over time offers a powerful, population-wide resource for child maltreatment research that can be used to identify risk and protective factors and to examine outcomes. Multistage de-identification processes have been developed to protect privacy and maintain confidentiality of the datasets. Lack of information on those not coming to the attention of child protection agencies, and limited information on certain variables, such as individual-level SES and parenting practices, is outweighed by strengths that include large and unbiased samples, objective measures, comprehensive long-term follow-up, continuous data collection, and relatively low expense. Ever emerging methodologies and expanded holdings ensure that research using linked population-wide databases will make important contributions to the study of child maltreatment.

Trauma and mental health of medics in eastern Myanmar's conflict zones: a cross-sectional and mixed methods investigation.

BACKGROUND: In conflict and disaster settings, medical personnel are exposed to psychological stressors that threaten their wellbeing and increase their risk of developing burnout, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. As lay medics frequently function as the primary health providers in these situations, their mental health is crucial to the delivery of services to afflicted populations. This study examines a population of community health workers in Karen State, eastern Myanmar to explore the manifestations of health providers' psychological distress in a low-resource conflict environment. METHODS: Mental health screening surveys were administered to 74 medics, incorporating the 12-item general health questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the posttraumatic checklist for civilians (PCL-C). Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 medics to investigate local idioms of distress, sources of distress, and the support and management of medics' stressors. RESULTS: The GHQ-12 mean was 10.7 (SD 5.0, range 0-23) and PCL-C mean was 36.2 (SD 9.7, range 17-69). There was fair internal consistency for the GHQ-12 and PCL-C (Cronbach's alpha coeffecients 0.74 and 0.80, respectively) and significant correlation between the two scales (Pearson's R-correlation 0.47, P<0.001). Qualitative results revealed abundant evidence of stressors, including perceived inadequacy of skills, transportation barriers, lack of medical resources, isolation from family communities, threats of military violence including landmine injury, and early life trauma resulting from conflict and displacement. Medics also discussed mechanisms to manage stressors, including peer support, group-based and individual forms of coping. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest significant sources and manifestations of mental distress among this under-studied population. The discrepancy between qualitative evidence of abundant stressors and the comparatively low symptom scores may suggest marked mental resilience among subjects. The observed symptom score means in contrast with the qualitative evidence of abundant stressors may suggest the development of marked mental resilience among subjects. Alternatively, the discrepancy may reflect the inadequacy of standard screening tools not validated for this population and potential cultural inappropriateness of established diagnostic frameworks. The importance of peer-group support as a protective factor suggests that interventions might best serve healthworkers in conflict areas by emphasizing community- and team-based strategies.

Bringing researchers and community developers together to revitalize a public housing project and improve health.

Tens of billions of dollars-both public and private-flow to low-income communities each year, mostly for affordable housing. However, it is rare for the health effects of these investments to be assessed. In San Francisco, California, a collaborative effort is under way that aims to fill this research gap while helping residents of Sunnydale, the city's largest public housing project, where poverty, violence, and truancy are entrenched. The collaboration is in its earliest stages-with construction not scheduled to start for at least four years-but some early lessons have emerged. For example, researchers and community developers have found that their data collection needs and timeline expectations often don't match. Nevertheless, the collaborators intend to use the long period before groundbreaking to establish baseline measurements of residents' social and physical well-being, plan initiatives in collaboration with community members and stakeholders, and seek funding for the initiatives and a longitudinal evaluation of the community.

Socioeconomic predictors of health and development in middle childhood: variations by socioeconomic status measure and race.

BACKGROUND: Socioeconomically disadvantaged children have poorer physical and mental health and lower social and school/academic functioning compared to children with higher socioeconomic status (SES). These associations are not static but may vary by choice of SES indicator and child race/ethnicity. However, little is known about these associations in middle-childhood, a distinct and critical developmental period. We explore these associations in a small exploratory study designed to examine associations between SES and child developmental outcomes in middle childhood. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We recruited 60 families with a child between 8-12 years of age from the San Francisco Bay area September 2005-June 2006. The MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire was used to assess health and adaptive functioning across four developmental domains: physical health, mental health, social functioning, and school/academic functioning. We examined a range of SES measures including continuous and categorical assessments of poverty, income, wealth, maternal and overall family educational attainment, subjective social status, and cumulative social risk. A series of multivariate ordinary least squares regressions was performed on the total sample and within race-specific groups. RESULTS: Although the long-recognized, graded relations among SES and outcomes were present, associations employing categorical representations of SES were far more pervasive; and stronger in magnitude. Wealth and highest degree earned in the family showed the strongest associations across virtually all health/functioning domains. Health and functioning was more strongly associated with educational attainment among Whites and financial resources among Blacks. Among Whites more wealth was associated with worse outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Further research is needed to confirm the study findings. However, this study raises important questions about the measurement of SES for studying disparities in child health and developmental outcomes. This initial research suggests that improvements in health and functioning in middle childhood may require more significant status transitions; more targeted social interventions to address racial/ethnic disparities in child health and developmental outcomes; and a need to intervene on adversities facing affluent youth, a potentially hidden yet vulnerable group in middle childhood.