Proposition 10, also known as the California Children and Families Act of 1998, is the legislation for creating Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern). Over the past 15 years, First 5 Kern administered a trust fund from a $.50 per pack tax on cigarettes or equivalent tobacco products to support children ages 0-5 and their…

Objective: First, to describe a community-academic partnership that piloted a parent and home-based programme focused on the intersection of health and education from a social determinants foundation and determine the feasibility and acceptability of such work. Second, to examine trends and co-occurrence of social and environmental context,…

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau has launched a five-year initiative that will support state efforts to build comprehensive early childhood service systems. This initiative--the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (SECCS)--provides two year planning grants followed by three year implementation grants to the 50 state…

If early childhood systems are to be effective at the population level then they must be able to provide family-centered care to all the racial, ethnic and cultural groups that they serve. Despite major policy driven and technological advances in healthcare, health disparities across different races and ethnicities persist. For example, the infant…

In 2003, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) released a "Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Health." In recognition of the critical role states play in the development of early childhood initiatives and of the unique contributions that state Title V programs can make to these initiatives, the Bureau operationalized their…