Health Equity
Help Me Grow is an exemplary program addressing health disparities and promoting health equity. Three critical concepts that enable Help Me Grow to address disparities and promote equity:
- The first is the focus on vulnerable children who so often elude early detection and typically do not meet the relatively restrictive eligibility criteria of our various state early intervention programs.
- The second is the imperative of cross-sector collaboration in addressing the many adverse influences on children’s developmental outcomes, as well as maximizing the positive impact of protective factors.
- The third concept is the recognition of an ever-increasing number of sectors so relevant to children’s healthy development, especially those disadvantaged by poverty and a lack of access to resources: healthy homes, safe neighborhoods, transportation, workforce development, higher education, and so forth. These sectors complement and expand our notion of child health, early care and education, and family support as the key sectors in system building.
In this context, Help Me Grow linkage to the wide array of developmentally-enhancing, community-based programs and services that address the myriad of needs of disadvantaged families is imperative to achieve health equity.
https://helpmegrownational.org/help-me-grow-health-equity-and-young-children/
https://advancingkids.org/2020/08/21/help-me-grow-a-model-to-advance-equity/