Bright Futures Guidelines provide developmental milestones, health education, and anticipatory guidance for child and adolescent health care visits from birth through age 21.

Web Based Training:
Link to information

Promoting Child and Adolescent Health:

BRIGHT FUTURES AND EPSDT

This web course provides an overview of Bright Futures Guidelines, explains Virginia's EPSDT program services and how Bright Futures can be implemented as part of the EPSDT program services to promote child and adolescent health.

Target Audience

This course is intended for health care professionals working with children, adolescents and their families, including physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, nutritionists, dentists and mental health providers.

What is Bright Futures?

Bright Futures is a vision, a philosophy, a set of expert guidelines, and a practical developmental approach to providing health supervision for children of all ages, from birth through adolescence.

Bright Futures is dedicated to the principle that every child deserves to be healthy and that optimal health involves a trusting relationship between the health professional, the child, the family, and the community as partners in health practice.

Bright Futures Mission

The mission of Bright Futures is to promote and improve the health, education, and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, families, and communities.

Bright Futures Project Goals

The goals of Bright Futures are to:

• Foster partnerships between families, health professionals, and communities.
• Promote desired social, developmental, and health outcomes of infants, children, and adolescents.
• Increase family knowledge, skills, and participation in health-promoting and prevention activities.
• Enhance health professionals' knowledge, skills, and practice of developmentally appropriate health care in the context of family and community.

Bright Futures Core Concepts Bright Futures is based on the following core concepts:

• Prevention Works
• Families Matter
• Health is Everyone's Business

To see video presentation, go to http://pediatricsinpractice.org/

Bright Futures Core Competencies Bright Futures promotes the following six core competencies:

• Partnership
• Communication
• Health Promotion & Injury Prevention
• Time Management
• Education (Anticipatory Guidance)
• Advocacy

For more information, see Henry Bernstein, DO, Bright Futures Work Group. as quoted in Green M. Palfrey JS, Clark EM Anastasi, JM, eds.2001: Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents, Second Edition, Pocket Guide: 2001 Update.

Bright Futures Development

• Initiated in 1990 and guided by the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau, with additional program support from the Health Care Financing Administration's Medicaid Bureau.
• Developed comprehensive health supervision guidelines with the collaboration of four interdisciplinary panels of experts in infant, child, and adolescent health.
• Reviewed by nearly 1,000 practitioners, educators, and child health advocates throughout the United States.
• Published Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents in 1994.
• Launched Building Bright Futures in 1995 to implement the Bright Futures guidelines by publishing practical tools and materials and providing technical assistance and training.
• Updated and revised the guidelines for publication in 2000 to incorporate current scientific knowledge in health practice.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics is leading the development of the next edition scheduled for release in 2006.

Bright Futures Funding

Since its inception in 1990, Bright Futures has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under the direction of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Bright Futures and Public Health

In 1994 the first edition of Bright Futures was published under the leadership of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Medicaid Bureau, Health Care Financing Administration, with the hope that "those who care for children can be more effective in disease prevention and health promotion." The second edition, published in 2000, builds on a successful model and incorporates updated scientific and expert opinion.

The Bright Futures guidelines were developed as goals to be pursued in the interest of improving child health.

The specific nature of these recommendations should prove useful to those working toward a brighter future for our nation's children-- child health professionals and ancillary staff, public and private insurers, health departments, community health centers,schools, child development programs, parents, educators, leaders of managed care organizations, and many others.

The guidelines support the Healthy People 2010 national health promotion and disease prevention objectives related to mothers, infants, children, and adolescents.

Bright Futures Virginia - Objectives

• Promote implementation of Bright Futures within health districts.
• Disseminate national and VDH-developed Bright Futures materials and practical tools for health professionals, families, and communities.
• Support health districts in training health professionals, families, and communities to work in partnership on behalf of children's health.
• Develop and maintain state and local public-private partnerships.
• Evaluate and refine the efforts.
• Offer a framework for state agencies, private providers and families to work together with a common language

Bright Futures Virginia - Development

• Convened public-private Advisory Board 2000
• Implemented as the state standard for child and adolescent comprehensive health care in 2001.
• Healthy Virginians 2010 identified Bright Futures implementation as a strategy for achieving 18 of the 54 state objectives.
• Established Bright Futures Virginia Web site to serve as on online communication vehicle for VDH Bright Futures Advisory Committee and "home-base" for all Bright Futures Virginia activities.
• Provided training to health care providers, nutritionists, dentists, home visitors, and school nurses 2001-2005.
• Launched 6 module web course "Promoting Child and Adolescent Health: Bright Futures and EPSDT" http://www.vcu-cme.org/bf

Bright Futures Virginia - Contact Information

Catherine Bodkin, LCSW, MSHA
Resource Mothers Program Manager
Division of Women's and Infants' Health
Virginia Department of Health
109 Governor Street, 825C
Richmond, VA 23219
Tel: (804) 864-7768
Fax: (804) 864-7771
Email: catherine.bodkin@vdh.virginia.gov