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Community Health and Maternal, Infant and Early Child Care

Decent Essays

1) Maternal, infant and child health (MICH) combines such an issue as the health of women, who are pregnant or have already given birth, infants, children or adolescents. This conception also includes the package of the professional acts within public health that targets to promote the health status of these vulnerable groups of population and overcome future troubles which they will likely face. In fact, their well-being defines the general level of the health of the whole generation and the system of the healthcare of these social groups can help predict further complications for the families and communities.
In the twentieth century the area of MICH began to develop in the unique political and social environment of the USA, where the confidence on individualism has formed the attitude that caring for infants, children and adolescents is the parents’ responsibility. The role of government in this connection is only to interfere to help when the families are not able to overcome the problems on their own. Widespread biomedical model of that time has addressed main money flows spent on MICH to the providing of the direct clinical services. By the end of the last century public healthcare programs allowed reducing maternal mortality ratio by more than 90 percent, and infant mortality ratio by about 99 percent (Gale Encyclopedia of Public Health, 2008).
2) Child maltreatment is a violence expressed in the abuse and scorn to the children under age 18. This term includes all

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