Oral

There are a wide range of factors which place a child at-risk for early developmental, behavioral and learning problems, all of which may compromise the child’s school success and life opportunities. This session will address several of these factors. Presentations include descriptions of community-wide interventions to improve school readiness and academic outcomes and ways to use available state-wide data to inform program planning and decision-making to enhance early childhood outcomes. There will be a discussion of the potential impact of various risk factors, including the neurological impact of trauma on children in foster care. The psychometric properties of a quality of life scale that may be used with children who have severe developmental disabilities will be presented. Finally, we will address the problem of including vulnerable children in emergency preparedness planning. This is especially important because too often the needs of children are inadequately addressed in community-wide emergency preparedness planning.

Session Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be better able to: • Describe how a diverse community collaborated to improve school readiness for young children, including many immigrant, low-income and higher income children. • Evaluate challenges of linking state-wide datasets collected separately for vital statistics, health surveillance, and education administration purposes. • Describe neurological consequences of trauma on foster care infants and toddlers. • Describe the psychometric properties of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale. • Discuss strategies in emergency preparedness for vulnerable populations

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing