Project Head Start and the Pediatrician

Abstract

Project Head Start is a program to pro vide educational health, nutritional, psycho logic and social services to pre-school chil dren who live in conditions of economic deprivation. By providing these in a co ordinated way that allows each service to extend and enhance the value of the other services, it hopes to provide an environment in which each child can achieve his full potential. In the process of meeting these goals, Project Head Start can provide new knowledge, new procedures, and new mod els for organization that can have a revo lutionary impact on the health, education, and welfare of all children, and of our whole society.

Program implications of new knowledge regarding the physical, intellectual, and emotional growth and development and the unmet needs of children and youth.

“…In the summer of 1966, only one in four children examined in Project Head Start programs had ever been to a dentist, and between 40 and 90 per cent of the children examined had dental caries (depending on whether drinking water was fluoridated). 16 Despite the fact that restorative dentistry is now accepted as an essential aspect of dental care for children, the child of poverty is much more likely to be treated by extractions than by the filling of cavities, when he does receive care. ' The attitude that low-income families are not receptive to counseling regarding family size has been disproved in populations of developing areas such as India and Puerto Rico.…”

“…In the United States formal education is mandatory for all children until 16 years of age. We have described some of the factors affecting the child from low socioeconomic families resulting in the situation where he starts school behind his age-mates, and drops further and further behind with each passing year.…”