Healthy Children, Healthy Weight

Optimizing children’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive health and well-being is a goal in itself that also lays the foundations for long-term health of individuals, communities and societies. In today’s world, wide outcome variations can be mapped by location, income and origin. Poor health in early years further widens racial, social and economic gaps. Building a culture of health for all children requires there is shared mindset across a population that inherently values and prioritizes “our kids over my kids.”  

There is compelling evidence that concerted investment in early childhood development and education generates high social and economic returns. However, such investments are vulnerable to resource competition and have been diminishing in many countries. Conversely, some countries have justified such investments through appropriate public debate, backed up by demonstration of long-term benefits and management of political and financial trade-offs.  Successfully establishing why investing in children matters for all is what moves the needle in ensuring long term stable and financial investments in these types of programs that have proven to be so fundamental in a child’s future health and well-being. 

Early childhood programs need to be integrated into ongoing support for child health and well-being in later years and placed in the context of inter-generational health, taking particular account of maternal and family stress. This needs support at both the macro level - with societal demand stimulating political and socio-economic action - and the micro level, to help families engage with community resources, co-create better health pathways, and enable children to overcome adverse experience and trauma.

Schools have unique potential to enhance child well-being holistically through curricula, play, sports and food. Many countries leverage schools as a place to reach, serve and support families through a multitude of policies and programs.  Schools impact children directly and through outreach to families and they play a pivotal role in developing a community culture of health to help all children flourish.   What are the best practices for establishing this as a norm and value for an entire population?  How can these best practices and methods be translated across countries and communities? 

Building on Salzburg Global’s long-standing series on health systems transformation, this program will enable participants from across the world to review strategies and adapt them to different contexts to shift social norms and investment priorities. This seminar will seek to understand how to best empower families, schools, service providers, and policy makers to create healthy environments for all children and in turn establish a shared value across a population for young people.