Nurturing children's development through healthy eating and active living: Time for policies to support effective interventions in the context of responsive emotional support and early learning

Fostering the growth, development, health, and wellbeing of children is a global priority. The early childhood period presents a critical window to influence lifelong trajectories, however urgent multisectoral action is needed to ensure that families are adequately supported to nurture their children's growth and development. With a shared vision to give every child the best start in life, thus helping them reach their full developmental potential, we have formed the International Healthy Eating Active Living Matters (HEALing Matters) Alliance. Together, we form a global network of academics and practitioners working across child health and development, and who are dedicated to improving health equity for children and their families. Our goal is to ensure that all families are free from structural inequality and oppression and are empowered to nurture their children's growth and development through healthy eating and physical activity within the context of responsive emotional support, safety and security, and opportunities for early learning. To date, there have been disparate approaches to promoting these objectives across the health, community service, and education sectors. The crucial importance of our collective work is to bring these priorities for early childhood together through multisectoral interventions, and in so doing tackle head on siloed approaches. In this Policy paper, we draw upon extensive research and call for collective action to promote equity and foster positive developmental trajectories for all children. We call for the delivery of evidence-based programs, policies, and services that are co-designed to meet the needs of all children and families and address structural and systemic inequalities. Moving beyond the “what” is needed to foster the best start to life for all children, we provide recommendations of “how” we can do this. Such collective impact will facilitate intergenerational progression that builds human capital in future generations

Predictors of clinician use of Australia’s national Health Information Exchange in the emergency department : an analysis of log data

Objective This study explores patient and context related factors associated with use of Australia’s national personally controlled Health Information Exchange (HIE), My Health Record, by emergency department (ED) clinicians. Materials and methods A retrospective analysis explored secondary routinely-collected data including all patients who presented (between August 2019–2021) to the ED at a not-for-profit hospital in Melbourne. Presentation data were linked to the HIE access log-data, and human resources data. The primary outcome indicated HIE access by an ED pharmacist, doctor or nurse, within 3 days of the patient presenting to the ED, or not. Nine variables were explored with logistic regression, representing patient (gender, age, diagnosis) and other factors (presentation time, arrival method, referral, acuity/triage, length of stay, admitted into hospital). Results HIE is accessed in 17.43% of patient presentations to the ED, led by pharmacists (15.60%). Overall, as demonstrated in the multivariable analysis, increased HIE access was associated with increasing age, with the biggest effect for 75–84-year old’s (odd’s ratio 26.15; 95% confidence interval 15.37–44.50), when compared to < 4 years of age. HIE access was also significantly and positively associated with patients who were later admitted into hospital from the ED (4.96; 4.61–5.34). Conclusion The results suggest users of HIE in the ED employ the system to meet their needs, but not for all patients. To maximise value derived from HIE use, clinicians should target system access for patients where the benefit of accessing the record outweighs the cost - this research suggests that is for patients who are older in age and are likely to be admitted, potentially linked to greater condition complexity. If the use of a HIE is to improve the provision of care in the ED, the key stakeholders governing patient information within the HIE need to focus on improving clinician recording behaviours for older people and those suffering from complex medical conditions. Doctors and nurses lag behind with respect to the use of the HIE by pharmacists. Therefore, a focus on encouraging HIE engagement across these clinician groups is drastically required