Updates

A recent report by the Children’s Health Policy Centre found that home visiting programs can have significant benefits for mothers and children facing adversity.

The report looked at randomized controlled trial evaluations of 13 home visiting programs across Canada, the U.S. and other high-income jurisdictions to investigate the effectiveness of these programs. Seven intensive programs based on the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) model demonstrated particularly robust benefits.

The benefits for children included:

• reduced prenatal substance exposure
• improved language
• improved cognitive development
• better mental health
• better school readiness and reading
• fewer injuries or maltreatment concerns

Benefits for mothers included:

• better social supports
• greater self-efficacy
• fewer subsequent pregnancies
• increased breastfeeding duration
• better mental health
• improved parenting
• improved socioeconomic status
• reduced exposure to intimate partner violence

NFP is an early intervention where nurses visit girls and women through pregnancy and their child’s early years. Nurses explore topics such as healthy pregnancy, parenting skills, healthy relationships and child development.

The report also identified six other home visiting programs that benefitted children and mothers. However, these programs had fewer positive outcomes than the NFP-based programs due to shorter durations, later interventions and the varied skill levels of providers.

These findings provide critical evidence that policymakers in British Columbia can use to build on the success of existing programs, develop new intervention strategies and ensure that children and mothers flourish.

To learn more, read the full report.

Social supports may be universally beneficial for adolescents, according to a paper recently published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Written by researchers including Kim Thomson, an assistant professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a CHPC team member, the paper tracked the emotional health of immigrant, refugee and non-immigrant early adolescents in British Columbia.

The study found that immigrant and refugee adolescents across 10 school districts started Grade 4 with poorer emotional health than their peers, highlighting the need for culturally responsive supports for these students. From Grades 4 to 7, both immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents experienced a decline in their emotional health.

However, first-generation refugees were a notable exception — they reported feeling more satisfied with life over the same time.

Despite the differences in emotional health between the groups, Thomson and her co-authors “did not find differences in the associations between improvements in emotional health and improvements in social support by immigration group.” This indicates that social supports may benefit all adolescents regardless of their immigration backgrounds.

“These results highlight social support as a modifiable factor within schools that can promote young people’s emotional health,” the study concluded.

To learn more, read the full paper.

A prevention program for Grade 7 students could help end the opioid crisis, according to a recent article by the team from the Children’s Health Policy Centre.

Published in The Conversation, the article is based on research findings about school-based primary prevention interventions over the last 20 years.

“Many of Canada’s responses to the opioid crisis still focus downstream on adults, after problems have started or become entrenched,” the article said. “In contrast, primary prevention operates upstream in childhood — before most young people start engaging in substance use, misuse or experimentation.”

The two most promising school-based programs are: Strengthening Families and Project PATHS, and they have been tested in the US and Hong Kong. Both led to significant reductions in opioid use by young people, including over long-term follow-up.

The two programs have another feature adding to their appeal for delivery in Canada, according to the authors. Training for facilitators is very brief — only two days for Strengthening Families and three days for Project PATHS.

“The short training time also helps reduce delivery costs, further increasing the appeal for policy-makers and school administrators,” the article said.

In concluding, the authors noted that the federal government has committed more than a billion dollars since 2017 to address the toxic drug problem — paralleled by provincial and territorial funding. “But a policy shift towards meaningful prevention also requires tackling the realities of current Canadian health spending priorities,” they said.

“Only 6.1% of health spending in 2023 went towards public health including prevention, a longstanding pattern. So concerted, coordinated and collaborative efforts are needed within and across every policy level and jurisdiction.”

So new prevention efforts are badly needed to tackle the opioid crisis in Canada — thereby ensuring that many more children do not go on to experience avoidable harms.

Read the full article here.

Transgender and nonbinary children and youth often face significant challenges compared to their cisgender peers. Many experience peer victimization, and trans teens also face verbal harassment in many Canadian schools. These adverse experiences also extend into the home, where trans and nonbinary youth may face emotional neglect or abuse by a parent or other adult.

These experiences cause significant harm, and they also place trans and nonbinary youth at risk for secondary mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Knowing how many transgender and nonbinary youth are dealing with these disorders is critical to inform prevention and treatment efforts. A recent report by the Children’s Health Policy Centre, funded by the BC Ministry of Health, investigated the prevalence of mental health concerns for trans and nonbinary young people.

The report identified:

• The overall prevalence of mental disorders in transgender and nonbinary youth, which is 56.6% This makes it between 5.9 and 13 times higher than their cisgender counterparts.
• Significant rates of self harm or suicidal ideation among transgender and nonbinary youth, with prevalence up to five times higher than in their cisgender peers.
• A need for easily accessible and effective mental health treatments for these children and youth.
• The importance of addressing the unacceptable and preventable adverse experiences that many transgender and nonbinary young people face and that can contribute to the development of mental health conditions.

These findings can inform efforts to improve mental health service planning, delivery and equity for transgender and nonbinary children and youth in British Columbia.

To learn more, read the report and review the findings.