2003 C. Anderson Aldrich Award Lecture: Enhancing developmental services in child health supervision - An idea whose time has truly arrived

Our experiences emphasize that innovations in child health supervision deserve consideration to promote the best developmental outcomes for children. Such promising strategies include individualizing the content of anticipatory guidance, strengthening early detection through developmental surveillance, and devising systems to link children and their families to programs and services. We are mindful of such formidable obstacles as insufficient funding for preventive services, training needs of child health providers, and the importance of well-designed, prospective studies of promising innovations. Finally, we are cognizant that the broad-based approaches so necessary to address the contemporary needs of children and families clearly exceed the boundaries of traditional child health services and that our efforts must include the role of child advocate, supporting those programs at the community, state, and national levels that facilitate children's development and well-being. Copyright © 2004 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.