Swedish Child Health Services Register: a quality register for child health services and children's well-being.

Background: Swedish child health services (CHS) is a free-of-charge healthcare system that reaches almost all children under the age of 6. The aim for the CHS is to improve children's physical, psychological and social health by promoting health and development, preventing illness and detecting emerging problems early in the child's life. The services are defined in a national programme divided into three parts: universal interventions, targeted interventions and indicated interventions.

Breastfeeding practice, breastfeeding policy and hospitalisations for infectious diseases in early and later childhood: a register-based study in Uppsala County, Sweden.

Objective: To examine the association between breastfeeding practice and hospitalisations for infectious diseases in early and later childhood, in particular, to compare exclusive breast feeding 4-5 months with exclusive breastfeeding 6 months or more. Thereby, provide evidence to inform breastfeeding policy.

Design: A register-based cohort study.

Child Health Nurses' experiences of addressing psychosocial risk factors with the families they meet.

Aim: To examine how child health nurses perceive the routine assessment of psychosocial risk factors in the family environment as well as their self-reported competence and the present organisational conditions in this context.

Method: A mixed-methods design was used, including three focus group interviews and a web-based survey. Qualitative data were analysed using systematic text condensation.

Differences in breastfeeding rate between mothers delivering by caesarean section and those delivering vaginally.

: The aim of the study was to analyse the impact of delivery on breastfeeding at 6 months, with special focus on caesarean section combined with established breastfeeding at 2 months. Delivery mode and breastfeeding at 2 and 6 months were studied in a database of 130,993 infants from two Swedish counties between 1990-2011. The difference in breastfeeding rates at 6 months between children delivered by caesarean section and children delivered vaginally was smaller in a subpopulation of children with established breastfeeding at 2 months compared to all children.

Organisation of preventive child health services: Key to socio-economic equity in vaccine uptake?

Measles has made a comeback in Western Europe, with more cases being reported each year. One factor behind this development is low vaccination coverage in socially disadvantaged segments of the population in many countries. This study investigates whether socioeconomic patterns of uptake of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Nordic countries differ by national organisation of preventive health services for children.

Agreement between mothers', fathers', and teachers' ratings of behavioural and emotional problems in 3-5-year-old children.

Background: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a valid and reliable instrument for measuring children's mental health, is available in parent- and teacher versions, making it an ideal tool for assessing behavioural and emotional problems in young children. However, few studies have evaluated inter-parent agreement on the SDQ, and in most studies on SDQ agreement, parent scores are either provided by only one parent or have been combined into one parent score. Furthermore, studies on SDQ inter-rater agreement usually only reflect degree of correlation, leaving the agreement between measurements unknown.

Relationship Between Breastfeeding and Early Childhood Obesity: Results of a Prospective Longitudinal Study from Birth to 4 Years.

Aim: To study a potential link between breastfeeding in infancy and obesity at age 4.

Materials And Methods: A total of 30,508 infants born during 2002-2007 from the databases of the Preventive Child Health Services in two Swedish counties and from national registers were studied. The outcome variable was obesity at age 4.

Child healthcare nurses believe that bilingual children show slower language development, simplify screening procedures and delay referrals.

Aim: A significant number of children living in Sweden are bilingual, but how language screening is performed in this group is unknown. We investigated child healthcare nurses' perceptions of the language screening of bilingual children aged 30-36 months, together with their clinical practices.

Methods: An online questionnaire was completed by 863 nurses who performed language screening of bilingual children in Sweden at least once a month, corresponding to 89% of the target population.

Mental health in Swedish children living in joint physical custody and their parents' life satisfaction: a cross-sectional study.

This study compared the psychological symptoms of 129 children in joint physical custody with children in single care and nuclear families, using a nationally representative 2011 survey of 1,297 Swedish children aged between four and 18 years. The outcome measure was the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and its association with three dimensions of parental life satisfaction was investigated. Linear regression analyses showed higher SDQ-scores for children in joint physical custody (B = 1.

Socioeconomic and early-life factors and risk of being overweight or obese in children of Swedish- and foreign-born parents.

Background: Ethnic minorities/immigrants have differential health as compared with natives. The epidemic in child overweight/obesity (OW/OB) in Sweden is leveling off, but lower socioeconomic groups and immigrants/ethnic minorities may not have benefited equally from this trend. We investigated whether nonethnic Swedish children are at increased risk for being OW/OB and whether these associations are mediated by parental socioeconomic position (SEP) and/or early-life factors such as birth weight, maternal smoking, BMI, and breastfeeding.

Child health care utilisation in families with young or single mothers in a Swedish county.

Young age and lone parenthood are risk factors for impaired health among mothers and their children. Due to the higher risks of negative influences on physical and mental health, young and single mothers should be of special concern to the Child Health Services (CHS). In the present study, we investigated consumption patterns of child health care services among young and single mothers in Uppsala County, Sweden to study whether they are reached by the universal CHS program and if selective or indicative measures were administered in daily CHS practice.

Parental region of birth, socio-economic status and infants' exposure to second-hand smoke.

Aim: To investigate the impact of parental region of birth on the risk of exposure to second-hand smoke for infants.

Methods: The smoking habits, according to child health records, of parents of 14 431 infants in Uppsala county, Sweden, born during 1997-2001, were investigated with logistic regression in the presence of socio-economic and demographic confounders from national registers.

Results: Fathers born outside of Sweden smoked more often than Swedish-born fathers irrespective of region of birth (adjusted odds ratios [ORs] 1.