Optimizing health services for young children in poverty: enhanced collaboration between Early Head Start and pediatric health care.

Given the importance of health to educational outcomes, and education to concurrent and future health, cross-systems approaches, such as the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) framework, seek to enhance services typically in K-12 settings. A major gap exists in cross-systems links with early care and education serving children birth to age 5. Both pediatric health systems and early family and child support programs, such as Early Head Start (EHS) and Head Start (HS), seek to promote and optimize the health and wellbeing of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families.

Quality home visits: Activities to promote meaningful interactions.

Examination of and support for specific practices that promote high-quality home visiting are essential as family support programs continue to expand across the country. The current study used direct observation of 91 home visits across 41 home visitors to examine relations among interaction partners, content of the interactions, the home-visitors' activities, and quality of home-visitors' practices and family-members' engagement within programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. More time spent in triadic interactions focused on child-related content, as measured by the Home Visit Rating Scale-Revised, was related to higher quality of family engagement in home visits, as measured with the Home Visit Observation Rating Scales.

Observing home-visit quality with the home visit rating scales: Introduction to the special section.

Evidence-based home-visiting programs aim to address one of the most important challenges facing our species-setting the next generation on a healthy path of development that prepares them for a future that is simultaneously uncertain and promising. Diverse research literatures have pointed to practices to effectively meet this challenge and better achieve the unfulfilled promise of home visiting by more effectively engaging parents in supporting their children's early development and well-being. Measures of home-visit quality practices drawn from social work, pediatric nursing, early childhood, and early intervention research literatures have identified building relationships with families and focusing on their strengths as effective, practices that are particularly important for vulnerable families.

Correction to: Triadic Interactions in MIECHV: Relations to Home Visit Quality.

The article "Triadic interactions in MIECHV: Relations to home visit quality", written by Carla A. Peterson, Kere Hughes-Belding, Neil Rowe, Liuran Fan, Melissa Walter, Leslie Dooley, Wen Wang and Chloe Steffensmeier, was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 12 June 2018 without open access. With the author(s)' decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 9 July 2018 to

Triadic Interactions in MIECHV: Relations to Home Visit Quality.

Objectives This study was conducted to look inside home visits to examine active intervention ingredients used and their relations with ratings of home visit quality. In particular, triadic interactions that engage the home visitor, parent, and child together and provide a context for home visitors to facilitate parent-child interactions by observing, modeling and coaching behaviors that promote optimal child development were examined. Methods Observations were conducted to describe intervention activities (with the HVOF-R) and rate quality of home visit practices and engagement (with the HOVRS A+).

HOME VISIT QUALITY VARIATIONS IN TWO EARLY HEAD START PROGRAMS IN RELATION TO PARENTING AND CHILD VOCABULARY OUTCOMES.

Home-visiting programs aiming to improve early child development have demonstrated positive outcomes, but processes within home visits to individual families are rarely documented. We examined family-level variations in the home-visiting process (N = 71) from extant video recordings of home visits in two Early Head Start programs, using an observational measure of research-based quality indicators of home-visiting practices and family engagement, the Home Visit Rating Scales (HOVRS). HOVRS scores, showing good interrater agreement and internal consistency, were significantly associated with parent- and staff-reported positive characteristics of home visiting as well as with parenting and child language outcomes tested at program exit.

Health disparities in low-income families with infants and toddlers: needs and challenges related to disability.

This study examines disparities in health status, health care utilization, insurance coverage and satisfaction in US low-income parents of infants and toddlers with disabilities compared to low-income parents of children without disabilities. The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project is a longitudinal study involving 2087 families in 17 communities across the United States. Families completed interviews at enrollment and at 7, 16, and 28 months after enrollment.

Paricalcitol reduces albuminuria and inflammation in chronic kidney disease: a randomized double-blind pilot trial.

Vitamin D receptor activation is associated with improved survival in patients with chronic kidney disease, but the mechanism of this benefit is unclear. To better understand the effects of vitamin D on endothelial function, blood pressure, albuminuria, and inflammation in patients with chronic kidney disease (2 patients stage 2, remaining stage 3), we conducted a pilot trial in 24 patients who were randomly allocated equally to 3 groups to receive 0, 1, or 2 microg of paricalcitol, a vitamin D analog, orally for 1 month. Placebo-corrected change in flow mediated dilatation with a 1-microg dose was 0.