Overview

Key messages:

• Childhood and adolescence are crucial in shaping long-term health, development and well-being.
• Interventions in early childhood and health promotion tackle risk factors and their long-term negative impacts but countries do not invest enough in prevention.
• Children from disadvantaged backgrounds have higher unmet needs and worse health outcomes but also face the most difficulties accessing health and social care services.
• Multiple barriers stop vulnerable children and adolescents accessing support, including costs, administrative complexity, the fragmented links between sectors, language and health literacy.
• Targeted interventions are key in addressing disparities and in reaching among others migrants, refugees and those from disrupted family environments.
• Policy-makers can improve health promotion and preventive services for children and adolescents through three key pathways:

1. Strategic collaboration across health, social and educational sectors is vital in tackling the underlying determinants of health which cannot be addressed by one sector alone.
   • Encouraging bottom-up approaches fosters effective innovation.
   • Combining bottom-up approaches with top-down government support helps ensure the resources to implement, scale up and sustain successful programmes.
2. Developing robust data collection and the infrastructure to share data facilitates work across sectors.
   • Building systems that collect and share high-quality information enables collaboration between healthcare, social services and education.
   • Systematically integrating data and programme evaluations helps highlight what works or doesn’t work and the policy responses needed.
3. Supporting targeted interventions with tailored outreach initiatives can overcome access barriers.
   • Communication campaigns, engaging a mix of stakeholders and expanding school health service can reach vulnerable children and adolescents.
   • Introducing navigators or coordinators to guide families through service options helps vulnerable children and adolescents get support.
   • Linking parent and child healthcare fosters holistic and better integrated care.