Factors associated with early childhood development in municipalities of Ceará, Brazil: a hierarchical model of contexts, environments, and nurturing care domains in a cross-sectional study

Expectant mothers and fathers' knowledge of nurturing care in a developing country

“…The data of the study aiming to determine the impact of the NCF on the development of more than six thousand children under the age of five living in a poor area of Brazil revealed that a positive socioeconomic status, breastfeeding, lack of strict discipline, presence of caregivers providing responsive caregiving and provision of the opportunities for early learning are the key factors that increase the likelihood of a child reaching his/her developmental potential, even in an upper-middle-income country such as Brazil. These findings provide important insights into which ECD-related policies and programs can be planned, implemented, and disseminated in Brazil and other countries with similar characteristics (54). In a study conducted in Portugal, approximately 500 noncouple parents, in their thirties, of both sexes, with children aged 2-6 years, were examined for the relationship between developmental knowledge and the enjoyment of their caregiving.…”

Monitoring nurturing care environments for early childhood from the national to the municipal level

“…In recent years, different instruments have been developed for monitoring ECD outcomes at the population level (McCoy et al, 2021); and international agencies have called for the development of an instrument that allows comparable measurement of ECD at a global level (Cavallera et al, 2019), yet no consensus exists on which is the best instrument to do so. In this context, PIPAS offers the possibility of obtaining ECD outcomes and additional information across the five domains of the Nurturing Care Framework, making it possible to analyse the influence of such domains on ECD, as recently demonstrated in Brazil (Venancio et al, 2021(Venancio et al, , 2022. Hence, IMAPI and PIPAS can be used in a complementary way, because while IMAPI uses existing secondary data to evaluate the nurturing care environments, PIPAS collects complementary information on ECD outcomes through population surveys.…”

Projeto PIPAS: Monitoramento de indicadores do desenvolvimento na primeira infância

“…A porcentagem de cuidadores que relataram possuir e ler toda a Caderneta de Saúde da Criança foi de 30% (19% a 40% entre municípios). Esse fato é preocupante, uma vez que foi demonstrado que ler a Caderneta da Criança é um fator protetor ao desenvolvimento infantil (Venancio et al, 2022). A porcentagem de cuidadores que relataram ter recebido informação sobre DI no serviço de saúde, de educação ou serviço social foi de 63%, variando entre 41% e 80% entre os municípios.…”

“…Vale destacar que o inquérito possibilitou a análise sobre fatores associados ao desenvolvimento infantil, a qual foi apresentada em outra publicação (Venancio et al, 2022). Crianças com menos de 36 meses de idade apresentaram menor probabilidade de atingir os marcos de desenvolvimento quando nasceram com baixo peso.…”