The health development organization: An organizational approach to achieving child health development

The health development organization (HDO) is a new approach to the organiza tion and delivery of children's health and social services. The HDO would c ombine the best features of vertically integrated HMOs with horizontally in tegrated, child-focused social services and longitudinally integrated healt h promotion strategies. Its mandate would be to develop the health of child ren in a community. The impetus for creating HDOs is a growing body of evid ence in chronic disease epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, early intervention research, and life course cohort studies chat point to childho od as the period of life during which adult health status is determined and the opportunities for health capital formation are highest. Thus, a new ki nd of health care organization or framework, like the HDO, is needed to int egrate a full range of critical services for promoting children's developme nt.