Key health outcomes for babies and young children in the UK are failing to improve, paediatricians warn today.
Published today (15 March) by the Nuffield Trust and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the analysis looks at 16 child health measures in 14 OECD countries, from the early 2000s and the most recent year measured.
It is published as official statistics showed an increase in infant mortality in England and Wales.
On child outcomes such as life expectancy, nutrition, and immunisations, "the UK remains a long way short of its stated ambition to be an international leader in fostering a healthy start for children", the authors found.
The report points out the UK has among the lowest breast-feeding rates in the world – and high rates of child obesity.
It also lags behind other wealthy European countries in measles vaccination rates, it says.
Dr Russell Viner of the Royal College and colleagues say that progress is now stalling, after many years of improvement, and "we are lagging behind most other high-income countries on mortality, breastfeeding and obesity rates".
Much more needs to be done, the authors urge, including better maternal and antenatal health promotion, health and socioeconomic inequality reduction, and protect public health budgets.
Dr Viner said: "Given that children and young people make up a quarter of the UK population, it’s a real failure of the system that child health gets so little political attention. Investing in child health makes both moral and economic sense – for every 1 UK pound you put in, you get an average of 10 UK pounds back in terms of future productivity.
"We want to see the UK Government develop a comprehensive cross-departmental child health strategy.
“It’s also crucial that some of the biggest threats to child health are tackled boldly; for example tighter restrictions on junk food advertising to tackle obesity, the reinstatement of child poverty reduction targets and crucially the reversal of damaging public health cuts."
Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards said: “With some honourable exceptions, child health is notably absent from much policy thinking at the moment and we are now falling behind our peers when it comes to several vital measures.
“It’s time for policymakers to take child health seriously before our somewhat mediocre international standing becomes even worse.”
• Official figures published yesterday showed an increase in infant mortality in 2016 in England and Wales.
There were 2,651 deaths of children under the age of 12 months in that year compared with 2,578 the previous year. The mortality rate increased from 3.7 to 3.8 deaths per 1,000 births, according to the Office for National Statistics.
David Buck, from the King’s Fund, said it was “deeply worrying” that the historic trend of falling mortality rates had stalled.
He said: “The government urgently needs to set out how it plans to address this.”
• Teenage experience of junk food adverts is linked to a big increase in the likelihood of them being obese, according to a study published today.
Researchers found that teenagers who could recall seeing an advert daily were twice as likely as others to be obese, according to Cancer Research UK analysts.
The findings are based on a YouGov survey of some 3,348 teenagers.
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