The Healthy Steps for Young Children Program, which added behavior and development services to pediatric practices, continued to benefit families more than two years after the intervention ended, according to a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The sustained benefits from participation in Healthy Steps included greater satisfaction among parents with their child's health care, greater odds that parent's will report a child's serious behavioral issue to the pediatrician and greater odds of children reading books. Parents also were less likely to use severe discipline such as spanking with an object or slapping in the face. The findings are published in the September 2007 edition of Pediatrics.
“Incorporating developmental specialists into pediatric practices seems to be an effective strategy to meet families' needs regarding their children's behavior and development,” said Cynthia Minkovitz, MD, MPP, lead author of the study and associate professor with the School's Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Minkovitz noted that this universal practice-based intervention had favorable, sustained effects on “experiences seeking health care and other parenting behaviors that are critical to children's development.”