Improving the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents: guidance on scheduled child and adolescent well-care visits

Overview

To survive and thrive, children and adolescents need good health, adequate nutrition, secure, safe and a supportive clean environment, and opportunities for early learning and education, responsive relationships and connectedness, and opportunities for personal autonomy and self-realization. To promote their health and wellbeing, they need support from parents, families, communities, surrounding institutions, and an enabling environment. Scheduled routine, regular checkups by health-care providers to ensure the healthy growth, development, and well-being of children in the first two decades of their lives and to support and guide parents in the care they give to their children and themselves.

This guidance on scheduled well-care visits is the first in a series of publications to support the operationalization of the comprehensive agenda for child and adolescent health and wellbeing. It provides guidance on what is required to strengthen health systems and services for scheduled routine contacts with providers to support children and adolescents in their growth and developmental trajectory, as well as their primary caregivers and families. It outlines the rationale and objectives of well care visits and proposes a minimum of 17 scheduled visits In addition, it describes the expected tasks during a contact, provides age-specific content to be address during each contact, and proposes actions to build on and maximize existing opportunities and resources. 

This guidance is primarily aimed at policy makers and managers responsible for designing and managing health and wellbeing services for children and adolescents, and health and non-health care providers.