Being equipped to gather epidemiological information at neighborhood level and to publish the findings in a form that will help communities to maintain, evaluate and modify programs and services is one of the objectives of a public health-based prevention science.

Australia and Canada have been working on the building blocks for some years by developing versions of an Early Development Index (EDI) conceived by Magdalena Janus and the late Dan Offord at McMaster University in Ontario.

The Canadian EDI and its Australian variant (the AEDI) provide a community-level measure across five domains: language and cognitive skills; emotional maturity; physical health and well-being; communication skills and general knowledge, and social competence.

Both have the potential for combining local evidence on children's well-being with epidemiology relating to levels of social cohesion, and for arming a local population with the means to steer improvements to children's health and development.

The direction of the Australian activity is being guided by the Centre for Community Child Health at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Collaborators in the scientific work include Fiona Stanley’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.

Last week, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and the Minister for Early Childhood Education, Child Care and Youth, Kate Ellis announced completion of a new public phase of the work and launched an addition to the AEDI website which makes community based data freely available online. A hierarchy of interactive national, regional and community maps has been linked to summary tables of the epidemiological data.

The latest government announcement said international evidence for investing in all aspects of a child’s early development was overwhelming. It was particularly compelling for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Kevin Rudd’s center-left government made the national roll-out of the Index a prominent election commitment in its 2007 campaign.

Between May and July this year, data were collected on over 261,000 children – 98 per cent of those in their first year of full-time school.

Some of the data for smaller communities has still to be assembled and is not included in the first edition of the maps, but most should be in place by next March, and a national release of results for all communities is promised for early 2011.

[See also: Is Canadian Index the key to standard child development measures?.]

In a UK equivalent of the indexing initiative, data is being collected for The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile based on a questionnaire administered by teachers on behalf of every child in early years education.

Likewise, it assesses developmental progress and the results are being aggregated, but, so far, there are no signs that the data will be made as publicly available or that they are being regarded as a vehicle for greater community engagement.

At a regional level in the UK, similar work across a wider age range is being done in Birmingham as part of the city’s Brighter Futures strategy. In that case, there is equivalent enthusiasm for a mapping exercise using geographical information systems (GIS), once the response rate has reached the right level. [See for example: Forward! Brighter Futures program gets green light 784.]

Meanwhile, prevention science activity in Australia is being accelerated by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.

Stephen Zubrick, Head of Population Science at the Telethon Institute has launched a national Prevention Science Network following a visit earlier in the year by Mark Greenberg from the US Prevention Research Center based at Penn State University.

The Australian network aims to build the science of prevention, build capacity in prevention science across the research, policy and practice communities, and advocate for prevention science as a responsible and cost-effective approach to advancing developmental well-being.

• The Discussion Paper Making the Case for Prevention Science in Australia is a free download.