Physicians unveil comprehensive plan to address lagging child health and development in New Zealand

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) has today launched a new policy blueprint for early child development and is calling on the New Zealand government to prioritise child health and wellbeing in the upcoming Budget.

Launched at the College’s congress in Auckland this afternoon, the policy position statement Early Childhood: The Importance of the Early Years offers 47 policy recommendations for improving early development and child health.

RACP President, Associate Professor Mark Lane, said “while in recent times the New Zealand Government has taken some really positive steps towards improving early child development, including the upcoming Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy, there is much more that needs to be done to tackle the issue.

“The upcoming budget has been flagged by the Government as a wellbeing budget – the best way to ensure wellbeing into the future is to put children’s health first now.

“Investing in the early years of children’s health, development and well-being is the most effective means of reducing the risk of poor health outcomes and addressing health and social inequities.

“By investing in early development, we can drastically improve the trajectory of a person’s health over the course of their life and therefore combat inter-generational cycles of disadvantage.”.

“There is an extensive body of literature and research which exists that describes the services and the physical, psychosocial and social environment required to promote optimum infant and child development.

“Our blueprint released today draws on this literature and puts forward a number of practical solutions and policies to ensure every child in New Zealand receives the best possible start in life.”

In its statement, the College puts forward a number of recommendations for the Government, with a strong focus on parental and infant mental health, nutrition, early childhood education and social welfare, including:

1. A universal sustained postnatal home visiting program, providing support to all parents for the first 10 days after birth
2. Introduction of mandatory regulations to restrict the marketing of unhealthy diets to children and young people
3. Implement an effective tax on sugar sweetened beverages to reduce consumption and use the revenue to invest in culturally relevant initiatives to improve health equity
4. Review how to best integrate community Well Child Tamariki Ora services within a broader Primary Health care model, including maternity care
5. Fund the development, implementation, evaluation and scaling up of integrated early childhood programmes designed to improve access to child and allied health
6. Provide adequate income support where there are dependent children of parents who are unemployed or living with a disability which prevents them from working

“The upcoming Budget is a timely opportunity for the New Zealand Government to take decisive action to improve early child development and re-write successive governments’ failure to tackle issues such as child poverty head on,” said A/Prof Lane.

“Investing in the health of our youngest members of society makes sense on every level.”