Housing and Healthy Development (1 CE)

This course is for: Clinical Psychologists, Counselors, Nurses, and MFTs

Course By: Ken Springer, PhD

Content By: Dunn, J. R. (2020). Housing and healthy child development: Known and potential impacts of interventions. Annual Review of Public Health, 41, 381-396.

FitzGerald, C., Hurst, S. (2017). Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review. BMC Med Ethics 18, 19.

Course Description: Housing affects children's social knowledge and competence, emotional development, linguistic and cognitive development, physical development, communication skills, and general knowledge. The characteristics of housing that influence healthy development include the presence of biological, physical and/or chemical hazards, the physical design of the housing, and its psychological, social, financial, and locational attributes. Studies have linked these characteristics of housing to specific child health outcomes, but a framework linking housing to healthy child development in a broader sense is critical to the promotion of public health policy as well as interventions that support children's health.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify why the study framework links attributes of housing to healthy child development
2. Describe how 6 attributes of housing have been found to affect 5 domains of healthy child development
3. Generalize the potential for housing interventions to support healthy child development, and note the methodological challenges for studying these interventions

Course Outline:

• Read and understand Housing and healthy child development: Known and potential impacts of interventions
• Review the Course Description and Learning Objectives
• Consider the six attributes of housing and the five domains of children's development discussed in the article, noting the interrelationships among them and the implications for intervention
• Work through the post-test questions, using the article as the sole basis for your answers
• Revisit the article for any missed questions and/or to better understand the relationships between attributes of housing and healthy child development as well as the implications for intervention

Required Implicit Bias Information:

Implicit biases incorporate an association that occurs outside of conscious awareness that may resultantly lead to a negative evaluation of the patient derived from irrelevant characteristics; i.e. gender and/or race. A systematic review of the literature revealed that 35 studies identified the existence of implicit bias in healthcare professionals; all correlational studies evidenced a significant positive relationship between implicit bias levels and lower quality of care (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017). Continued research in health care settings, combined with greater homogeneity in methods, should be employed to test for the occurrence and prevalence of implicit biases in healthcare settings as a strategic approach for mitigating related disparities (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017).

Approvals: