Population Perspectives on Nurturing Relational Health from Early Life: A Systematic Review Series

This paper provides the conceptual framework for a new review series that bring together the global literature on population approaches to nurturing relational health across the first three years of life. Early relational health is defined as ‘the everyday interactions that happen between children and their carers across the many settings in which they live and grow … that meet universal needs for food and shelter, for safety, and for a sense of belonging, worth, identity and place that collectively establish secure foundations for lifespan health and development'. The first four reviews describe (1) the relational ecology of early childhood, (2) associations with early brain development, (3) associations with relational outcomes beyond early childhood, and (4) evidence-based interventions for nurturing relational health within universal, population-based, settings (e.g., maternal-child health). The next four reviews tackle the deeper intergenerational question of what it means to raise children and young people in ways that also set developmental conditions for future roles as parents by describing (5) Australian Aboriginal ways of nurturing relationally healthy children and young people, (6) findings from intergenerational cohort studies, (7) population based interventions for nurturing relational health from childhood to parenthood (e.g., schools and communities), and (8) approaches to implementing evidence-based interventions in ways that ensure sustainability. An additional technical paper describes the development and testing of a new AI platform (LitQuest) that was purpose built to expedite title and abstract screening for the review series. Findings from the complete series are synthesised in a final paper that identifies critical gaps in the evidence base and provides recommendations for future research to advance population-level approaches to nurturing relational health from the earliest years of life.