Placement: UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities
Mentor: Neal Halfon, M.D., M.P.H., Director, UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities; Professor, Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health; Professor, Public Policy, Luskin School of Public Affairs; Professor, Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine
Co-mentor: Adam Bennett Schickedanz, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Los Angeles
Project: Developing a Policy Strategy and Implementation& Framework to Prevent and Minimize the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
Jane Kinsey is a 2021–22 New Zealand Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is a member of the Executive Leadership Team of Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, where she is General Manager for Mental Health, Addictions and Disability Support Services. Kinsey began her professional life as a physiotherapist and completed further training in development studies before moving into senior leadership roles with the Primary Health Care Organisation. Over the past 18 years she has held senior leadership and management positions in the health sector, across both primary care and secondary care setting. Kinsey is a member of several national and regional sector and alliance forums through which she has contributed significantly to strategy development and implementation plans with a focus on orienting resources and services to reduce inequity.
Project Overview: The first 1,000 days of a child’s life are critical in determining whether they will be a healthy, mature and productive adult. The family environment in which babies live is incredibly influential, as it impacts children’s cognitive, social, and emotional abilities and subsequent success in school. Prevention and intervention strategies applied early in childhood are essential to achieving positive outcomes for the individual, family/whānau, community, and wider society.
The global situation, reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement against racial discrimination, demonstrate the urgent imperative to accelerate our focus& reducing inequity. This research seeks to outline an approach to strategic policy-setting and corresponding implementation and monitoring frameworks to better meet the people’s needs through cross-agency collaboration. It will provide accompanying guidance for the policy-setting, governance, and systems processes required for data collection and analysis. This work aims to inform the return on investment in programs that identify, prevent, and mitigate the harm caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), in order to reduce inequity and improve health and social outcomes.