Organization of child health care in Europe (part 2)

Abstract

Children's health in Europe has reached its best levels historically, but chronic illnesses and mental health problems in childhood are increasing. This trend poses new challenges to health systems and the need to focus efforts on prevention from an early age. At the same time, it is necessary to implement working approaches/models for integrating and coordinating the care of children with a chronic disease or mental health problems. The aim of this study is to review the organization of services for children in European countries whose health systems have predominantly budgetary funding for health care. We aim to reveal positive and problematic aspects in the organization of services aimed at children and their families. A search has been made for publications in PubMed and Google Scholar with English keywords. This second part presents the approaches to the organization of preventive and chronic care for children in Italy, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. In the countries reviewed, there are good examples of prevention of both physical and emotional, social and mental health of children in early childhood and that of the parents. In the field of chronic care, Denmark and the United Kingdom are implementing the chronic care model in order to better integrate professionals and different levels of care. Compared to the countries in the first part (Germany, France, and the Netherlands), the countries examined in this survey (Denmark, Italy, and the United Kingdom) show stricter adherence to traditionally established models of services for children and the dominance of the role of primary health care.