Early (years) reactions: comparative analysis of early childhood policies and programs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic
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Abstract
Background
During the first wave of COVID-19 there was little evidence to guide appropriate child and family programs and policy supports.
Methods
We compared policies and programs implemented to support early child health and well-being during the first wave of COVID-19 in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK, and the USA. Program and policy themes were focused on prenatal care, well-baby visits and immunization schedules, financial supports, domestic violence and housing, childcare supports, child protective services, and food security.
Results
Significant heterogeneity in implementation of OECD-recommended policy responses was found with all of the included countries implementing some of these policies, but no country implementing supports in all of the potential areas.
Conclusions
This analysis gives insight into initial government reactions to support children and families, and opportunities for governments to implement further supportive programs and policies during the current pandemic and future emergencies.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.04.21252943: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We devised search strings based on our targeted policy topics and repeated the search on a range of pre-designed search engines that pulled information specifically from governmental and public health bodies, as well as on Google. Googlesuggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.04.21252943: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We devised search strings based on our targeted policy topics and repeated the search on a range of pre-designed search engines that pulled information specifically from governmental and public health bodies, as well as on Google. Googlesuggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Strengths and Limitations of Study: This study used a comprehensive and iterative search strategy of the grey literature to explore this important topic. This allowed us to find policy options and programs that we had not considered a priori. It also allowed for a broad and thorough comparison of these countries’ approaches to supporting young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study is limited by the number of countries we chose to include. We purposefully chose these countries in order to provide a broad range of political traditions and COVID-19 experiences. However, since we wanted to also allow the findings to be comparable to the Canadian context, all of these countries are high-income. All of the included countries, with the exception of Singapore, are OECD comparator countries. This means that our findings may not be applicable to low- and middle-income countries. As well, though our comparison is thorough, and we briefly explored possible reasons for variations in policy choices, a much greater political analysis would be required to fully understand the reasons for each countries’ specific policy and program decisions. Lastly, while we explored each countries’ governmental response and recommendations provided by clinical colleges and bodies, the degree of uptake of these programs by the targeted population has not been explored here. Future Directions: In the future, the implementation and uptake of these policies and programs should be assessed. Moreover, ...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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