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Kindergarten children are more susceptible to diseases as they are still in the process of acquiring immunity. The purpose of this study was to assess kindergarten teachers’ and parents' perception of the prevalence of health problems among children in Kuwait and the role of health education in promotion of healthy habits.

The methodological aim of this study was to assess the factors that affected kindergarten children's health as children suffered from health problems that affected their quality of life. Therefore, a questionnaire was administered to evaluate kindergarten teachers’ and parents' perception of the main factors that caused increased health problems among children at higher rates than before. A total of 164 teachers and parents were recruited for this study and the questionnaire was completed.

The results indicated that kindergarten children suffered from different health problems that affected their quality of life. Lack of health knowledge and education in the society was one of the main reasons for the prevalence of these health problems among young children in Kuwait. The findings offered insight about the importance of health education and promotion in prevention of diseases.

This study offers insights into how to increase health knowledge and education in the Kuwaiti community to prevent and decrease health problems that affect children's health.

The level of mother’s health knowledge influences not only her health, but also significantly predicts her children’s health and medical care, and spending on medical care. This relationship has not yet been empirically assessed in India. The purpose of this paper is to measure the level of health knowledge of mothers in India and its association with the short-term illness in their children, medical care and medical care expenditure.

The authors used data from India Human Development Survey, 2004-2005. An index of “health knowledge” was constructed by using factor analysis. Multivariate binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression and multiple classification analysis were employed to analyze the relationship between mother’s health knowledge and child illness. Pearson’s χ2 test and ANOVA test were used to estimate levels of statistical significance in bivariate analyses.

The results revealed that children of mothers with medium and high-health knowledge were significantly less likely to have short-term illness (OR=0.390, p < 0.01 and OR=0.543, p < 0.01) than those children whose mothers had no or low-health knowledge (OR=1.00, p < 0.01) cutting across all background characteristics. Similarly, the attainment of modern medical care for short-term illness of children was nearly two times greater (OR=1.97, p < 0.05) in mothers with higher health knowledge as compared to mothers with no or low-health knowledge (OR=1.00, p < 0.01). The results also showed that mothers with higher health knowledge spent more on medical care for their children’s short-term illness than mothers with no and low-health knowledge.

The findings suggested a significant effect of mother’s health knowledge on the prevalence of short-term illness among their children, medical care and expenditure on the medical care. Appropriate health knowledge for women is crucial to the wellbeing of their children. Besides, social equity in terms of the distribution of facilities, to gain health knowledge and medical care, are essential to be established in India.

To the knowledge, this study is the first attempt to measure the health knowledge of women in reproductive age and its association with the prevalence of short-term illness, medical care and medical expenditure of their children in India. In general, a health knowledge index could be a significant composite predictor of the health in a population.

This study aims to establish the perspectives of community providers on challenges and enablers in developing child mental health capacity in disadvantaged communities in South Africa.

The authors involved 29 community providers operating in a large urban-deprived area in the Gauteng Province, east of Johannesburg. Community providers had educational, social and health care backgrounds. Their perspectives were captured through three focus groups, two participatory workshops and reflective diaries. Data were integrated and subjected to inductive thematic analysis.

Three interlinked themes were identified. Community mobilization was viewed as pre-requisite through mental health awareness and strategies to engage children, youth and parents. Service provision should take into consideration contextual factors, predominantly inequalities, lack of basic needs and gender-based issues (domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and single motherhood). Participants referred to severe mental health needs, and related to physical health conditions, disabilities and impairments, rather than to common mental health problems or wellbeing. They proposed that capacity building should tap into existing resources and integrate with support systems through collaborative working.

Child mental health policy and service design in Majority World Countries (MWCs), should involve all informal and structural support systems and stakeholders. Contextual factors require consideration, especially in disadvantaged communities and low-resource settings, and should be addressed through joined up working.

Children’s mental health needs are largely unmet in MWC-disadvantaged communities. These findings capture the experiences and perspectives of various community providers on how to enhance mental health provision by mobilizing communities and resources.

In India, the number of migrants to urban areas is increasing over time. Unlike in earlier years where male migration was prominent, recent trend shows an increasing trend of female and family migration. As migration and health status are highly correlated, the nature of relationship deserves greater attention from researchers. Although literature on internal migration in India is abundant, little attention is given to the research on the effect of migration on the health status of children. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The present paper, based on National Family Health Survey 3 data, examines the health status of migrant and non-migrant children in the urban areas of India.

Distribution according to social and demographic characteristics is disadvantageous for urban children who are born to migrant women. As seen from various child health indicators, urban children’s health in general and the health situation of migrant women’s children in particular leaves much to be desired. Pattern of migration tends to have an impact on child health in urban areas; children of women who migrate from rural areas are in an adverse position. Duration of migration has a negative influence on health status of urban children. Overall, it was found that migration status of mothers has an independent effect on child health outcomes; children of migrant mothers have a lower health status.

This paper fulfills the need to study the health status of migrant and non-migrant children in the urban areas of India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if child labour can have long-term consequences on children’s health status.

To capture this relationship, this paper uses the Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD) conducted in 1998, 2003 and 2008, structured as a pseudo panel and estimated using a fractional response model.

The results show that child labour is negatively associated with child’s health status, and the longer the hours worked, the worse is the child’s health status. The authors also observe that hazardous labour had a three times higher negative effect on the child’s health and those who worked in service sectors are more prone to having a worse health status.

The study shows that different children’s occupations may have very different impacts on children’s health and indicates that despite the fact that Brazil has a strict law prohibiting child labour, the share of children working is still high and this work has a negative impact on child’s health.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the large differences between poor and rich Brazilian households regarding children's outcomes; that is, understanding inequality in health outcomes in the childhood in Brazil, examining the link between the health of Brazilian children and a variety of socioeconomic factors.

Logit models for some measures of child health (poor health, chronic diseases, hospitalization and visits to doctors and dentists). Individuals are grouped according to their income decile. Independent variables comprise indicators of socioeconomic status and demographic variables, primarily related to the family structure.

Results suggest that the true effect of family structure is more complex than the biological relationship of parents to children. There are large effects of family income distribution on child health indicators. When control variables are included, the magnitude of these effects changes. The addition of mothers' educational attainment to the set of controls reduces the estimated income effects. Also, the gradient in the health‐income relationship is a little steeper for older children.

Although there are numerous studies investigating the impact of family resources on health outcomes, whether income and family structure truly matters is still a debated issue. Brazil presents a huge level of income and until recently there has been little data with which to assess the nature and magnitude of the role, which socioeconomic factors play in the incidence and severity of health problems. The authors originally attempt to understand what it means to talk about inequality in health, and whether health inequality in Brazil is linked to income inequality.

Health literacy is a key international public health goal. Conceptualising health literacy as an asset highlights the importance of fostering a health literate youth for the benefit of future generations, yet research has predominantly focused on examining adults’ and older adolescents’ health literacy. This presents a gap for child-centred studies with younger populations. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a qualitative study that explored health literacy, in a nutrition context (i.e. nutrition literacy), from primary school children’s perspectives.

The study examined children’s experiences in accessing, understanding and interacting with nutrition information. In doing so, the research employed a socio-ecological framework to understand facilitators and barriers that can influence children’s nutrition literacy. Preadolescent boys and girls aged 11–12 years were invited to take part in the study. At the time of recruitment, students were attending one of three state government schools in a socioeconomically disadvantaged region of metropolitan South Australia. A series of focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 38 participants. Interview data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic techniques.

Children demonstrated that they accessed and interacted with a variety of sources of nutrition information. Nutrition understandings were derived from the home, school and media environments. Parents and teachers were cited as key influences on children’s interactions with nutrition information and children particularly emphasised the trust placed in their teachers as health “experts.” While the home and school environments emerged as potential settings to develop children’s nutrition literacy skills, the children’s narratives also alluded to potential barriers surrounding nutrition literacy.

This study provides further insight into children’s nutrition literacy. While functional nutrition literacy remains a fundamental starting point, children are interested in opportunities to develop more interactive skills, such as those related to cooking. Opportunities also exist to foster more critical competencies. This research thereby highlights the importance of more integrated strategies to promote nutrition literacy among this population group across multiple settings.

This paper aims to examine the impact of child health (measured by nutritional status) on schooling performance of Bangladeshi children.

The data set used in this study comes from a survey titled “Micronutrient and Gender Study (MNGS) in Bangladesh”. The survey was administered by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The author controls for the potential endogeneity of child health by an instrumental variables approach. The results indicate that the impact of child health on school achievement will be overestimated if endogeneity of child health is ignored.

The results reveal that child health has significant effects on school enrolment and grade attainment, although it does not affect the current school attendance. The impact of child health is stronger for school enrolment compared to grade attainment.

This study improves the understanding on the relationship between child health and schooling in several ways. First, the author controls for the potential endogeneity of child health by an instrumental variables approach. The chosen instrumental variables (i.e. heights of father and mother) are strong predictors of child health and satisfy the validity test. Second, this study examines the effects of child health on wide ranges of schooling measures: enrolment, attendance and attainment.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to measure the health inequalities among malnourished children; second, to decompose the health inequalities to identify key socioeconomic predictors for child malnutrition; and third, to assess the change in the proportional contribution of key predictors over time.

The study has used data of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 1992-1993, 1998-1999 and 2005-2006. The information on anthropometric indicators for children below three years of age is provided; however the study is restricted to “weight-for-age,” as it is considered to be a comprehensive indicator of child nutritional status. In the first stage of analysis, health inequalities are measured among malnourished children using concentration indices (CI) for each round of NFHS. In second stage, the inequalities are decomposed to estimate the proportional contribution of socioeconomic predictors. In the third stage, change in the relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors over three rounds is assessed to suggest target-specific policies and programs.

The results highlight a slow decline of only seven percentage points in the proportion of malnourished children in India during 1992-2006. The increasing values of CIs from −0.13 (1992) to −0.18 (2006) demonstrates the concomitant rise in economic inequalities among malnourished children. The results of decomposition analysis point toward household poor economic status and mother’s illiteracy as the major contributor of inequalities during 1992-2006. During the study period, the economic status explained 50, 65 and 59 percent of inequalities, whereas mother’s illiteracy explained 40, 30 and 29 percent of inequalities, respectively. Overall, the contributors to health inequalities remained the same over time with a change in their relative contribution.

The present study is focussed on three rounds of NFHS data conducted at different time period and so it has certain limitations which should be kept in mind while interpreting the results. The study has revealed mother’s education and economic status of the household as the major contributory factors toward child health inequalities. However, one should not forget that the level and quality of education has undergone tremendous change from 1992 to 2006 which the authors could not capture considering the availability of data in the form of years of schooling. Second, since the NFHS-1 has collected the information about the caste groups in only three categories, i.e. schedule caste, schedule tribe and others; the authors have to pool the other backward caste groups with the general caste groups. Third, the authors have used the broad classification of place of residence, i.e. rural and urban area to analyze the inequalities assuming the uniform level of development across the urban regions; however there exists huge disparities within urban areas which leave scope for further research. Fourth, though, the authors have estimated the wealth based inequalities, but NFHS does not provide the absolute level of wealth and so the authors have computed the proxy measure for wealth based on the household assets which has been extensively used in the field of research. Despite these limitations, the authors however believe that the present research work has appropriately decomposed the inequalities among malnourished children and have revealed the changes in the proportional contribution of socioeconomic factors over time.

The decomposition analysis brought into light that average health indicators are insufficient for determining the right approach to health intervention programs. Health policy interventions have to focus ideally on both health averages and within and between group inequalities based on varying contributions of socioeconomic determinants.

Concentrated efforts along with the inter-sectoral concurrence, good nutrition governance, effective investment and unequal distribution of resources are pre-requisites to ameliorate the level and existing inequalities in child malnutrition in India.

The distinctiveness of this study can be primarily found in the use of all three rounds of NFHS data to estimate health inequalities among underweight children. The study has also decomposed the health inequalities to estimate and analyze the change in relative contribution of socioeconomic predictors for each round to facilitate the formulation of target-specific policies and programs.

Workforce pressures are the key constraining factor in effective delivery of the CAMHS agenda (Kurtz et al, 2006). The continuing investment and expansion of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) has key implications for workforce planning, and improving outcomes for children and young people requires an adequately resourced, trained and motivated workforce. Every Child Matters: Change for children in health services and the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services establishes for the first time, clear standards for promoting the health and well‐being of children and young people, and for providing high quality services that meet their needs. This paper explores the key workforce issues facing child and adolescent mental health services as identified by child and adolescent practitioners. A number of key themes are identified along with the associated challenges.