Overview

Enabling young children to achieve their full developmental potential is a human right and an essential requisite for sustainable development. Given the critical importance of enabling children to make the best start in life, the health sector, among other sectors, has an important role and responsibility to support nurturing care for early childhood development. This guideline provides direction for strengthening policies and programmes to better address early childhood development.

It is primarily the family who provides the nurturing care that children need to develop in the earliest years. Many parents and other caregivers need support to put this into practice. Therefore, the guideline contains four recommendations aimed at caregivers, health professionals and other workers who can assist them, as well as policy-makers and other stakeholders. The recommendations relate to i) providing responsive care and activities for early learning during the first 3 years of life; ii) including responsive care and early learning as part of interventions for optimal nutrition of infants and young children; and iii) integrating psychosocial interventions to support maternal mental health into early childhood health and development services.

Contents

• Acronyms
• Glossary of Terms
• Acknowledgments
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
  • Background
  • Scope
  • Relevant WHO Guidelines and Tools that Support ECD
  • Population of Interest
  • Key Questions
  • Outcomes of Interest
  • Target Audience
  • Persons Affected by the Recommendations
• Guideline Development Process
  • WHO Steering Group
  • Guideline Development Group
  • Systematic Review Teams
  • Management of Conflicts of Interests
  • Identification of Key Questions and Outcomes
  • Quality Assessment and Grading of Evidence
  • Quality of Evidence
  • Managing Group Processes and Decision-Making
  • Document Preparation and External Peer Review
  • Presentation of the Recommendations
• Evidence and Recommendations
  • Key Question I
  • Key Question II
  • Key Question III
  • Key Question IV
  • Key Question V
• Research Gaps
• Implementation of the Guideline
  • Implementation Considerations
  • Monitoring and Evaluation of the Quality and Implementation of the Guideline
  • Supporting Local Adaptation
  • Dissemination and Plans for Updating
• References
• ANNEX 1. WHO Guidelines and Tools that Support Early Childhood Development
• ANNEX 2. Questions in PICO Format
• ANNEX 3. Steering Group
• ANNEX 4. Guideline Development Group
• ANNEX 5. Authors of Systematic Reviews
• ANNEX 6. Declarations of Conflicts of Interest
• ANNEX 7. GRADE Evidence Profile Tables

Suggested citation:

Improving early childhood development: WHO guideline. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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