“Binge eating disorder”, "skin picking disorder”, “risk syndromes” … the American Psychiatric Association is taking soundings on proposed changes to the classification of mental disorders which may open new developmental avenues for prevention science.

"I want her job to be not just about the bump…" the UK government’s former chief adviser on children's services, Naomi Eisenstadt, wants midwives to play a more pivotal role in a universal family support service.

Newspaper stories about the continuing decline in the emotional well-being and self confidence of UK schoolchildren point to the difficulty of collecting comparable data from the classroom year on year.

Tracing the neurological impact of social rejection using brain imaging technology has led Californian psychobiologists to suggest that commonplace non-prescription painkillers may be an effective treatment for emotional hurt.

Researchers in three US universities are trying to understand the dynamics in the relationship between children’s developing behavioral problems and persistently harsh physical discipline on the part of their parents.

The UK Strategic Review of Health Inequalities puts prevention science, primary health care, transport policy and the national carbon footprint on the same page.

Research in Bangladesh and elsewhere in Asia uncovers an “epidemic” of child drownings – and an effective prevention program based on providing rural families with improved morning-hours child care.

Contributors to a major UK review of health inequalities recommend greater wariness of certain family support interventions: mentoring by volunteers, neighborhood regeneration programs, and mass publishing of better parenting "nostrums" are top of a task group's "better not do" list.

The spokesman for local authority children’s services in the UK links a renewed attempt to collect evidence of successful grassroots prevention and early intervention practice with efforts to protect the profession against spending cuts.

“Scaled up” or “rolled out” on a wide community scale, prevention programs are doomed to disappoint for “climatic” reasons almost too complicated to fathom. What might computer modeling have to offer?

Assessing the value of “booster” sessions to consolidate the benefit of an early intervention program to combat aggression, school failure, and low social competence highlights some of the problems of experiments with timing.

A photography exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City traces the modern development of the seventeenth century European invention of "childhood".

In a special edition of the Journal of Children’s Services, researchers from the UK and US investigate the condition of evidence-based policy and practice and find too much murky business.

Where does the good science come from – from within the minds of great men and women, or from their interaction with the communities they serve? More the latter than the former, says the social biographer.

Grim findings about the decline in the mental health and well-being of UK teenagers spread dismay and led to government action when they were published in 2004. Five years later, analysis of more up-to-date data paints a slightly brighter, but no less perplexing picture.

New research hammers home a familiar message: for the best long-term public policy gain and the best chance of rescuing young people from a rut of disadvantage, we should be making good quality childcare available to poor families.

To seal the connection between research and children’s services practice, a UK study makes the case for a new breed of professional hybrid – research intermediaries who combine scientific insight with hands-on experience.

Dean Fixsen explains why he believes a global conference in Washington DC in 2011 will enable prevention scientists to leap the gap between evidence-based policies and reliably built and implemented services.