All parents want their children to thrive. But some parents need support, because they live in vulnerable circumstances, for example due to poverty, or mental health problems. These families are often only identified when problems become serious, as data and care are scattered among providers across domains, and parents sometimes distrust care providers because of negative experiences.  

The ‘Designing for Impact’ project aims to support prevention in the first 1000 days of life by contributing to the development of an easy-to-administer online risk screening (protype) tool. This tool can be used by professionals across domains, across different phases in the first 1000 days of life to timely identify (future) parents and children in vulnerable circumstances, and, in consultation with the parents, guide them to preventive interventions that meet their needs. This Sprint project piggybacks on a larger project (‘Making Big Data Meaningful for a Promising Start’) in which CBS and Perined data (pregnancy and birth outcomes) are used to develop the prototype risk screening tool. 

Working together 

This Sprint project incorporates data and stakeholders from the Youth Health Care Services. The Youth Health Care services are a vital partner for improving prevention in the first 1000 days of life. Specifically, the resources allowed us to: 

1. incorporate routine service delivery data from the Youth Health Care services in our prediction models. These data allowed us to develop prediction models for outcomes that are highly important in the first 1000 days, i.e. child growth and development. 
2. collaborate with stakeholders from the Youth Health Care services and policy makers of the City of Rotterdam in the incorporation of the results of the prediction models into the risk screening tool.

Conclusion and follow-up 

We have been able to successfully link the Youth Health Care data to data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) on a broad set of determinants for child health and development. On the basis of this linked dataset, we have developed prediction models for three outcomes: the D-score – a global indicator of general child development based on the Van Wiechen scheme developed by TNO and supported by WHO – measured at age three years old, overweight/obese and risk of psychosocial problems (SDQ), both measured in grade 1 of secondary school (ca 12/13 years old). The results of the prediction models are being incorporated in a protype tool for early signalling of vulnerable circumstances in the first 1000 days of life.  

This collaborative process provided a basis for follow-up work and for hopefully longer-term collaboration with the CJG – a vital partner in the first 1000 days. Additionally, this project provided the basis for acquisition of a small project (50k) with the EUR Trust Fonds to do further policy relevant research on the D-score.  

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