R4D collaborates with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to create a global resource on strengthening early childhood development within primary health care systems and collaborate with country governments to develop country action plans building on the resource.
The Challenge of Improving Early Childhood Development
There is an urgent need to improve the quality and availability of early childhood development (ECD) services globally. Countries are not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, children’s development has been threatened by the pandemic, and there remains a concerning lack of prioritization of resources to ECD. If this issue remains unaddressed, young children around the world will continue to miss opportunities in this critical window of development.
The Opportunity to Strengthen ECD through Primary Care
Many young children and caregivers have several contact points within the health system during the early years; using these moments to promote critical ECD services has the potential to alter their developmental trajectories.
However, these efforts come with many challenges:
- Health care workers in many contexts are already overburdened and lack adequate training and support.
- Primary health care has traditionally focused on children’s survival rather than their holistic health and development.
- Providing a more comprehensive set of services also requires considerable coordination across ministries, sectors, and departments.
Encouragingly, there is a growing understanding of the potential impact of strengthening PHC for ECD, and a number of recent efforts highlight the value of supporting decision makers who seek to do so. Such efforts can help countries to improve the efficiency of scarce resources, reduce the need for external support, and meet programmatic goals.
R4D’s Work to Support Optimal Child Development
With support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and building on adjacent initiatives (such as the Integrating Early Detection and Treatment of Child Wasting into Routine Primary Health Care Services: A Resource Guide to Support National Planning and the Nurturing Care Practice Guide), this work aims to provide practical, evidence-based guidance for country leaders to strengthen PHC entry points to support ECD. This work will have three distinct but complementary phases:
- Results for Development (R4D) will lead the development of a global resource on strengthening primary health care (PHC) services to promote ECD and support national and sub-national planning processes. This is in collaboration with a Global Advisory Group including members from UNICEF, WHO, and other partners.
- R4D will support the governments of Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique in using the resource to advance planning for promoting ECD within their routine primary health care systems. This context-specific action planning process will help government officials and other country leaders achieve their early childhood development goals.
- The resource will then be updated based on reflections from country experience before global dissemination.
