Enhancing health and development | Children's Institute

Working across multiple sectors, the Children's Institute aims to understand children’s lived realities, the contexts within which they live, and social change that affects their health and development. Our current work includes interventions to promote the transformation of healthcare services beyond a narrow focus on treatment and child survival, to creating an enabling environment in which children can thrive and realise their rights to physical and mental health and wellbeing. This shift from a survive agenda to a thrive agenda has profound implications for the design and delivery of maternal and child healthcare services.

Our work within this thematic area includes:

Investigating community systems and structures that facilitate or impede quality early learning
Testing new models of care that can contribute to improving the health and wellbeing of pregnant women
Addressing the commercial determinants of health, such as infant formula, harmful foods and alcohol

Projects

Explore our research and advocacy within this thematic area

Commercial determinants of child health

Group care for the first 1,000 days

Safe inclusive participative pedagogy: Improving early childhood education

Child rights and child law short course for health and allied professionals

Healthy cities

Infants and HIV/AIDS in South Africa: The fragility of life

Home truths: Residential care in the context of the AIDS pandemic

Social Service Practitioners Advocacy Network

National Health Act

Child Survival Project

Children’s Bill project

Child Health Services review

Health and social services to address the needs of orphans and other vulnerable children in South Africa

Media and the representation of children affected by HIV/AIDS

Children and antiretroviral treatment

Western Cape developmental screening programme

Researching and developing systems to facilitate the identification, monitoring and support of vulnerable children

National school health services policy

Rapid appraisal of primary level health care services for HIV-positive children at public sector clinics in South Africa

National directory of services for children and youth infected and affected by HIV/AIDS

Latest

Have a look at key developments in this work

Cover of Group Care toolkit

Group antenatal care toolkit is recognised as "excellent innovation"

The Group Care 1000 Toolkit, which we were the lead editors of, has gained recognition from the European Commission as an “excellent innovation”.

First page of article in the Journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa

South African health professional associations urged to end commercial milk formula industry sponsorship

As part of our work on the commercial determinants of child health, we're calling on South African health professional associations to end commercial milk formula industry sponsorship.

Healthy and unhealthy foods

Joint press statement: Why are South African classrooms and children becoming fast food billboards?

As civil society organisations committed to food justice, children’s health and education rights, we are alarmed by the handover of McDonald’s-branded desks to Cape Town schools, facilitated by the Minister of Basic Education.