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Childcare is an essential part of early life environment that has a significant influence on lifelong physical and mental health. This study aimed to examine the relationship between development, growth and frequency of illness in different types of care.

This cross-sectional study recruited 177 children aged 30–36 months and their caregivers. Of these 66 were being cared for at home and 111 were attending out-of-home day-care facilities. An interview form, growth measurement and the Denver Developmental Screening Test II were collected. The association between child developmental, growth and illness variables was analyzed with Chi-square, Fisher's exact and Mann–Whitney U tests.

This study found that the development and growth results did not show statistically significant differences between the home-care and day-care groups. The number of minor illnesses was significantly lower in home-care children than in day-care children (OR = 0.33, 95% CI = 0.15-0.72).

This study indicated that the risk of infection is increased in the children attending day care. Provision of a healthy and safe childcare environment needs to be an essential health promotion strategy to improve family and child well-being.

As the number of women's participation in the labor market has increased rapidly over the past decades, so did the number of children in nonparental care. The study findings reflect that the development of a day-care center for children was unclear, whereas the risk of infection was increased. Therefore, provision of a healthy and safe childcare environment needs to be an essential health promotion strategy to improve family and child well-being.

The purpose of this study is to present the workflow on the integration of Maternal and Child Health Care Services (MCHCS) into the electronic Health Information System of the Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG-HIS).

As part of the cooperation between the University of Rome Tor Vergata-Italy and the Iraqi Kurdistan Ministry of Health, six PhD positions were granted for Iraqi students to create a local team of experts with the aim of supporting the scaling-up of the KRG-HIS. After specific training, the team then trained the staff members of the health centers, met health authorities and analyzed the local scenario to ensure that the KRG-HIS could be better tailored to regional needs. In 2019, the integration of MCHCS into the KRG-HIS was one of the main areas of research.

Health data collection was mostly paper-based, which made vital statistics and evaluation of outcomes difficult to measure. More than 15,000 paper-files from the Duhok Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital were retrieved from storage. Then data entered in the KRG-HIS. Theoretical and practical training sessions were conducted for local staff members, with 183 health operators already having been trained. Daily supervision of the online system and field visits were ensured.

There is a need to support health authorities in improving data collection on MCHCS, ensuring the future self-sufficiency of the HIS. Key to the process is the creation of a specialized team of local experts with the objective of “training the trainers”.