Child Health

The Child Health expertise area has the knowledge in house to play a key role in the health and psychosocial issues concerning young people and so approach such issues in an integrated way.

• We can identify and monitor health problems
• We are able to get behind the determinants of health problems
• We can develop and implement interventions
• We can evaluate the effects of interventions (also in terms of costs) and identify the right implementation strategy
• We develop training for paediatricians

Our expertise in child health

The expertise area of Child Health comprises a number of research fields related to the health and safe upbringing of children:

• Obstetrics and maternity care
• Preventive healthcare for children and young people up to 23 years of age
• Psychosocial development of children
• Paediatrician training

By working collectively in multidisciplinary teams (obstetricians, physicians, psychologists, epidemiologists, health scientists, etc.) we help to produce solutions for obstetrics and maternity care, child health and child care. Through evidence-based research we develop guidelines and intervention that are applied in these domains. We ascertain the effects of interventions through evaluation and monitoring, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of preventive care for children.

Knowledge into practice

Child Health is an area of expertise that translates the knowledge developed in research into practice. A few examples:

• The implementation of guidelines: knowledge is contained in guidelines applied by the field, such as the guidelines for toilet training and skin.
• Monitoring developments as in the national growth study and Peristat, an international survey of mortality at childbirth.
• The development of interventions like CODIP, a programme for supporting children in divorce situations and for SBS, Shaken Baby Syndrome, a programme geared to young parents aimed at preventing SBS.
• Early warning in more areas like psychosocial problems, the ALPHA NL, warning of worrying upbringing conditions and child abuse by, for instance, applying the protocol to the emergency department in the hospital (MCH Protocol)
• Cost-effectiveness analyses: the extent to which intervention help improve effectiveness