What does it mean?
Adopting a holistic children and young people (CYP) centred approach to care so that health promotion becomes a central part of front-line healthcare. In addition, CYPHP adopts a public health approach to designing and delivering services. This means ensuring services are tailored as closely as possible to population need, and that healthcare aligns with public health and public policy in the best interests of CYP.
Why is it needed?
Public health, health promotion, and disease prevention are too often separate from healthcare. CYP-centred care looks at the whole child, in the context of their family and community, and considers health promotion a core activity. Public health and public policy are vital elements of protecting and improving health and wellbeing and maximising development.
What makes it happen?
A range of measures help put health promotion and public health at the core of our approach to care. At the level of the individual CYP - clinician interaction, this means measures such as ensuring guidelines and clinical decision support tools include health promotion and disease prevention in addition to treating problems after they have happened. We also work at the population level, shaping services according to the needs of the community. For example, we tailor services carefully to account for and include CYP who need healthcare but may not find it easy to access services. We strive to reduce health inequities among CYP through the way we design and deliver healthcare.
How will we know it's better?
Children are healthier, health promotion becomes a core part of healthcare, and healthcare access inequities are reduced.