Leveraging Opportunities for Prevention Across the Lifecourse Case Study: Training the Public Health Work Force at California's Contra Costa Health Services

A lifecourse perspective uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the long-term effects of chronic disease risk from biological, physiological, behavioral, and psychosocial exposures from gestation to adulthood. The lifecourse framework explains how biological and environmental exposures change individual and societal health outcomes across a lifetime and generations. Risk factors, protective factors, and early-life experiences affect people's long-term health outcomes. Collaboration between maternal and child health (MCH), chronic disease, and other state and local health divisions can not only shift departmental from treatment to early prevention, but can create more streamlined and comprehensive approaches to public health. Investing in MCH programs can in effect reduce the development of chronic disease and maximize resources. Speaker Cheri Pies, Director of Family and Maternal and Child Health (FMCH) Programs from Contra Costa Health Services, a California local health department, will discuss her work with training public health students and health department staff on the lifecourse perspective. The speaker describes how FMCH Programs utilizes innovative partnerships with families, community members, county programs, and community-based organizations to ensure the well-being of families and children within the community. Dr. Pies will discuss how the lifecourse perspective can be used to develop, implement, and evaluate health programs designed to improve outcomes in the perinatal period and beyond.