DDP 758. Jonathon Simon and Sydney Rosen. "The Family Health Cycle: Creating a Context for Maternal and Child Health Interventions." March 2000. 13 pp.

For most people, and in particular for children in developing countries, health outcomes are determined largely by decisions made within the household, by the family and especially by the mother and father. From infancy to adulthood, parents provide (or fail to provide) everything from nutrition and shelter to education and health care. The family is also typically the source of care and support for older people, who in turn contribute to care of children.

This paper develops a model for placing maternal and child health (MCH) in the context of the family and the outside forces that influence a family’s decisions. This model, called the "family health cycle," connects children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents in a system that, as a whole, produces the health of individual family members. The family or household, in turn, interacts with the formal and informal health services system, and is affected by a wide range of external conditions and inputs.

The model starts with the birth of a child, who then passes through the cycle as a boy or girl, again as a parent, and then, with luck, once again as a grandparent. Each stage carries with it age- and gender-specific health risks, and thus calls for different health interventions. Interventions at each stage can be viewed as inputs to help the individual survive (and benefit from lower morbidity) until the next stage, when new intervention inputs are required. This framework helps to identify which kinds of interventions -- biomedical, social, economic, environmental -- are likely to be most effective at each stage of the cycle. It thus has the potential to improve understanding of the linkages among the many MCH interventions available and help put scarce public health resources to better use.

Keywords: family health, maternal and child health

JEL Codes: I12, I18, O19

Jonathon Simon is the Director of the Health, Education, and Social Development Group at the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Principal Investigator of the Applied Research on Child Health (ARCH) Project being conducted under the Child Health Research Consortium of the Global Bureau, United States Agency for International Development.

Sydney Rosen is an Associate in the Health, Education, and Social Development Group at the Harvard Institute for International Development.

This paper was presented at The World Bank Human Development Learning Week, February 22, 2000, in Washington, DC.