Neighborhoods, families, and children: Implications for policy and practice

Recent global and national trends have put a growing number of families and children living in the United States at risk for adverse health and develo pmental outcomes. Policies and programs designed to address these problems have too often focused on the characteristics of individuals as the root ca use and have failed to address significantly core problems. The research re ported here suggests that researchers, program planners, and policy makers should go beyond the focus on individual to incorporate and target larger s tructural issues such as increasing poverty, growing economic inequalities between rich and poor, and eroding public social programs. This research de monstrates the importance of larger social structures for individuals' heal th. It also has implications for policy, namely: Neighborhoods are an impor tant target for intervention; policy makers must take a multi-issue approac h to addressing problems of the inner city; programs should look at buildin g on community resources and infrastructure, as well as address the needs o f individual community residents; and a "one-size-fits-all" mentality is no r appropriate when designing programs to serve neighborhoods. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.