Local Housing Characteristics Associated with Early Childhood Development Outcomes in Australian Disadvantaged Communities.

Disadvantaged communities tend to have poorer early childhood development outcomes. Access to safe, secure, and stable housing is a well-known social determinant of health but there is a need to examine key features of neighbourhood housing that reduce early childhood development inequities. The 2012 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), a population-wide measure of early childhood development, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics Socio-economic Index for Areas Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage were used to select fourteen disadvantaged local communities in five Australian states and territories based on those performing better (off-diagonal), or as expected (on-diagonal) on the AEDC relative to their socio-economic profile.

Confident and Understanding Parents (CUPs) - a child nutrition and active play pilot intervention for disadvantaged families attending Supported Playgroups in Victoria, Australia.

Issue Addressed: Health and nutrition inequalities are prevalent among families from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. However, there is limited evidence of targeted early childhood nutrition and active play approaches due to the methodological challenges in engaging vulnerable families in research.

Methods: The aim of this paper was to report findings from a pilot intervention called Confident and Understanding Parents (CUPs).