OVERALL TOPIC
The function of global health is to promote and improve health worldwide through research and intervention. Authors Frances E. Aboud and Aisha K. Yousafzai, in their review “Global Health and Development in Early Childhood,” discuss these goals with a focus on infants born in low- and middle-income countries. Their article reviews evidence from multiple studies showing how health and nutritional risks and inadequate psychosocial stimulation in children twenty-four months and younger affect their cognitive and language abilities.
VALUE OF THE PAPER “Global Health and Development in Early Childhood” was first published online in 2014, and then included in a 2015 edition …show more content…
This finding establishes the foundation for which the entire review is based, as the article examines interventions assessing nutrition and stimulation and how these interventions impacted children’s cognitive and language development. From there, Aboud and Yousafzai (2015) found that the stimulation interventions were more effective on mental development than the nutritional interventions. Lastly, the most effective of the stimulation intervention approaches were those that utilized small media, performance, and …show more content…
Scientifically, the studies show the effect nutrition and stimulation have on brain development, specifically language and cognitive function. Also new information about the brain can be assessed by using earphones to transmit language sounds and a cap that can pick up brain activity to measure the average waveform, which “reveals the site of the brain where speech is processed, the latency or time between the sound and processing it, and the amplitude of the waveform” (Aboud & Yousafzai, 2015, p. 445). Findings such as these are applicable to public health studies in developing and developed worlds and for studies on children or adults. Additionally, finding the right approaches to stimulate behavior change in each community can be applicable to other interventions apart from addressing development in early childhood years. For instance, if a technique promoting nutrition is successful in a community, the technique could be altered to implement the use of bed nets to prevent malaria. Furthermore, to find the right techniques for stimulating change, researchers look at models such as the health belief model and the social ecological model. New interpretations and applications of these models will enhance public health as a whole since these models are