Early Childhood
Using Medicaid to Ensure the Healthy Social and Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers
Part I: Executive Summary Each child’s social-emotional development underpins overall development and greatly influences his or her lifelong trajectory. Infants and toddlers experience a period of rapid brain development marked by great possibility and vulnerability, depending on their family and community contexts. The first years of life are particularly crucial to a child’s development of […]
Advocates Have a Key Role to Play Encouraging Early Childhood Sector to Leverage Medicaid to Meet Children’s Developmental Needs
Medicaid and early childhood care providers, including Head Start, child care centers, and home visiting programs, serve many of the same low-income children, yet the two systems rarely collaborate to improve overall population health. Reaching vulnerable children in their early years of physical, social and emotional development is essential to setting them on a path […]
Promoting Young Children’s Healthy Development in Medicaid and CHIP
Summary A child’s brain develops most rapidly in the earliest years of life, building the foundation for learning, behavior and health. Medicaid—as the primary source of health coverage for young, low-income children— is a logical system to reach families with young children and set them on a path of healthy physical, social, and emotional development. […]
Medicaid and Early Learning: Complex Systems at Play in Washington State
Editor’s Note: Shannon Blood is the early learning and home visiting program manager in Washington’s Medicaid agency. We were excited to know of the state’s decision to dedicate a Medicaid staff to young children—even more exciting since Shannon came to the agency from the early learning sector. So we asked her to share her initial takeaways […]
Early Childhood Educators Support Children’s Healthy Development: Who is Meeting their Health Care Needs?
Early childhood educators care for our youngest children during the time of their most rapid brain growth. They help foster essential brain development that builds a foundation for children to learn and grow for the rest of their lives. But the teachers themselves often go without. Faced with low wages and limited workplace supports, many […]
Want to Help Young Children? Expand Medicaid.
We are asked a lot about the ways states can do more for young children in Medicaid—and we have a lot to say! Young children’s healthy development is influenced by their interactions and relationships with parents and other adults. So naturally, for the 17 states holding out, we start by raising Medicaid expansion. While we […]