Week 9 - Healthy Children Flashcards
What is one of the greatest indicators of health and wellness in a community?
The extent to which it invests in a nurtures its children
What are some common health and developmental issues faced by Australian children?
- obesity
- intellectual disabilities
- behavioural problems
- respiratory illnesses
- oral health
- accident prevention
What are some of the challenges for parenting and child health?
- increasing population diversity
- the need for work and family harmony
- financial constraints
- the need for accessible, affordable child care
Name some determinants of healthy childhood
- warm consistent parenting
- a good education and health services when required
- having more protective factors than risk factors in their environment
What are the four systems of influence on childhood development identified by Bronfenbreneer’s theory of social ecology
1) Cultural beliefs and values (microsystem)
2) Neighbourhood and community (ecosystem)
3) Family (microsystem)
4) Individual characteristics and development stage (individual)
What resources does a family bring to a child’s life?
- socio-economic position
- time
- attentiveness
- cognitive and emotional support
- moral values
- expectations & motivations
Define a healthy child?
one who experiences warm and consistent parenting, a good education, receives health services when needed and has access to more protective factor than risk factors in his/her environment
Explain Bandura’s self efficacy theory
Based on the expectation that a person can master certain behaviours by engaging in those behaviours to achieve their goals.
When parents are provided with both information and trust in their own judgement in the context of their lives, they will be more likely to make decisions that promote better health for their children. As a results, their children are more likely to develop physical, cognitive and self-regulating capabilities that will endure over the life course
What is Bolwby’s theory of human attachment?
That newborn infants are predisposed to seek attachment to their caregivers in times of stress, illness or fatigue.
When parents have secure attachments in their lives they are more likely to be sensitive, responsive, engaged caregivers for their own children and supportive of one another as partners
What is reciprocal determinism (children specific)
Children affect and are affected by influences in their external world
What is the theory of biological embedding (gene-environment interactions)
Children’s interactions with the world around them at ‘critical moments’ along their development pathway determine their endocrine, neurological, cardiovascular and immunological development, and how they learn to modify incoming stressors
What is biological embedding?
The process through which extrinsic factors experienced at different stages ‘get under the skin’ or alter the body’s biological functions or structures during critical periods, habituation, learning, damage or repair
What are some adverse childhood experiences (ACE) that can impact on biological embedding?
- Emotional, physical, sexual abuse
- Emotional, physical neglect
- Witnessing domestic violence
- Household with mentally ill or substance abusers
- Losing a parent
- Household member incarcerated
What is allostatic load?
The cumulative effect of stress, which dysregulates, overuses and transforms adaptive processes into pathogenic processes, which accelerates ageing
What health issues can allostatic load, or cumulative effect of stress from adverse events lead to?
- heart disease
- cancers
- lung disease
- skeletal fractures
- liver disease
- sexually transmitted diseases
- a range of mental health disorders
- general health and social problems
- premature mortality
- development of a range of risk factors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, physical activity and other risky behaviours
