Family health is grounded on a life course approach to study the physical and social conditions during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and midlife that affect health outcomes in later life.
It also emphasizes the social and behavioral aspects of public health.
Key principles of family health include:
- Today’s healthy child is tomorrow’s healthy parent and grandparent.
- Fostering the health of a mother or father will also produce healthy children now and in the future.
- Healthy families are key to stimulating economic growth and fostering development with increasing equity.
- Poor, unhealthy families are unlikely to generate the increases in productivity and savings necessary for sustained economic growth.