Early Childhood Interventions. What Are They? 

In the next year and a half, we here at Healthcare triage are going to take some deep dives into issues of health policy, especially those that touch on social determinants of health and health equity. The episodes that do so will be a bit longer than usual. They’ll look a little different. They also come to you thanks to the support of the RWJF, which has generously supported their creation. We’re excited about this opportunity to really dig in, and we hope you will be, too.
What works to promote the health of children? What programs exist that provide services to families and children that have been studied rigorously? How well do these programs work? And what are the benefits compared to the cost of the program? And why does this matter? Early childhood interventions are increasing in popularity across the country in liberal and conservative places, but still questions remain about the research behind them.
We’re going to use those questions to frame our discussion of the work, and we’re going to start by broadly talking about the first question. Because it’s hard to discuss whether early childhood programs work before we know what early childhood programs are.
Resources used in the making of this episode:
RAND’s Investing Early - Taking Stock of Outcomes and Economic Returns from Early Childhood Programs: goo.gl/MKWjA1
Pew’s Results First Clearinghouse Database: goo.gl/x7QeHa
The Community Guide’s Community Preventive Services Task Force Findings: goo.gl/Y9Ag3L
Credits:
Aaron Carroll -- Writer
Meredith Danko - Social Media
John Green -- Executive Producer
Stan Muller -- Director, Producer
Mark Olsen - Graphics
/ aaronecarroll
/ crashcoursestan
/ johngreen
/ olsenvideo