‘Urgent action’ needed on failing child health | The Academy of Medical Sciences (acmedsci.ac.uk)
The Academy of Medical Sciences has released a report on child health in the UK, highlighting wide-ranging evidence of declining health among children under five in the UK and calling on policymakers to take urgent action to address the situation.
It estimates that major health issues like infant mortality, obesity and tooth decay are not only damaging the nation’s youngest citizens and their future, but also its economic prosperity, with the cost of inaction estimated to be at least £16 billion a year.
The report highlights wide-ranging evidence of declining health among children under five in the UK, including:
- Infant survival rates are worse than in 60% of similar countries and the number of children living in extreme poverty tripled between 2019 and 2022.
- A surge in demand for children’s mental health services since the pandemic.
- Over a fifth of five-year-old children are overweight or obese, with those living in the most deprived areas twice as likely to be obese than in affluent areas.
- One-in-four is affected by tooth decay.
- Vaccination rates have plunged below World Health Organization safety thresholds, threatening outbreaks.
It calls on policymakers to take urgent action to address the situation, with five recommendations to address the issues raised:
- Implementing effective early years interventions to improve child health and wellbeing and promote research to identify further approaches.
- Establishing a unifying vision across Government for the early years to coordinate policies and resources.
- Addressing the decline in child and family health workforce and fragmentation across sectors to deliver effective services.
- Improving collection and access to data on the wider determinants of child health to enable research and policy implementation.
- Ensuring diverse voices of children, parents and carers are represented in developing early years policies and interventions.