News from CDC: the Legacy for Children™ parenting model, partnering to translate research to practice for children in poverty.

Abstract

The findings and conclusions in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately 16 million US children currently live in poverty [1]. Children living in poverty experience significant disparities on indicators of physical and mental health and academic success [2–6]. The importance of positive early experiences and the benefits of early intervention to mitigate the life-long effects of poverty have been confirmed in biologic [7], economic [8, 9], and social models [10]. Unfortunately, early childhood interventions have historically been limited in producing impacts when taken to scale. This has been attributed in part to a lack of quality assurance when moving from research to practice [11] and poor attention to scalability and dissemination when developing programs [12]. To promote optimal development for children in poverty, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) developed the Legacy for Children™ (Legacy) model. NCBDDD seeks to promote the health of babies, children, and adults and enhance the potential for full, productive living through public health partnership, research, prevention, and education programs (http://www.cdc.gov/NCBDDD/AboutUs/index.html). Legacy is an evidence-based public health prevention approach to promote child health and development among families in poverty via a group-based parenting program [13]. The Legacy parenting curricula are developmentally sequenced sessions that cover themes including children's physical health, safety and nutrition, responsive and sensitive parenting, fostering children's development, and maternal self-care. Intervention components include mother and mother/child session time, one-on-one time to reinforce content, and participation in community events.