A book summary of the results of the UK Good Childhood Inquiry makes the case for a new approach to child welfare and well-being retrieving – and promoting above creative individualism – ideas about public service and neighborly love.

Being a science dummy is bad for your health. That’s the argument put forth in Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science. The good news is that Goldacre doesn’t make his medicine hard to swallow. He is engaging and unfailingly acerbic as he reports that the millions people are spending on too many ‘alternative cures’ is almost certainly a waste of money.

As you’d imagine, teaching families how to deal with conflict between parents requires one tricky balancing act after another. So a new book that translates cutting-edge family research into real-world programs – using a mix of evidence and “best guesses” – has much to teach all types of program designers.

Prevention Action looks back at a book from the business world, Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Hidden behind the awesomely bad title are ideas that could revolutionize evidence-based programs and change the lives of the people they serve.

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

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” Public health specialist David Hemenway celebrates the achievements of the people who make baby walkers wider – and airplanes safer.

“Those who suffer from OCD turn to psychiatry for some relief from their torment, not for aesthetic perspective!” Scientists clash with humanists in the struggle to distinguish between illness and disease.

Are the UK academics behind a hotblooded account of the relationship between inequality and the loss of well-being in the populations of the developed nations on the verge of re-inventing Utopian socialism?

The Harvard Center for the Developing Child has produced a useful layman’s guide to making good choices among evidence-based and not so evidence-based early childhood programs. But they still wind up by recommending expert advice…

Analysis of the work of the Children’s Fund in the UK is giving researchers an opportunity to consider whether a focus on the conceptual framework of social exclusion changes how services describe and seek to help vulnerable children. The answer seems to be “only superficially”.

A UK public health specialist does the once unthinkable: finds similarities between the speeches of Sir Keith Joseph – a pillar of Conservative governments during the Thatcher years in the UK – and Tony Blair in the heyday of New Labour.

A collection of essays offering eminently practical guidance on how to design randomized controlled trials so that they illuminate why programs work and in what conditions should begin to sway UK critics.