Background

Timely access to healthcare in the first 2000 days is often delayed for families who face inequity through social determinants, including geographic, cultural and economic factors.1 2 In recognition of this, current policy focuses on reducing inequity and supporting child development through community-based, integrated, service provision.3 4 Challenges to implementing and sustaining such services for early child development are, however, acknowledged internationally.3 5 6 In Australia, there are limited evaluation data and evidence to inform change in policy and practice.7 Equitable physical access to community-based services was found to be important for families with young children, including access by public transport and walking.7 Other issues pertaining to demand for supply and access to services included cost, waiting lists, integration and coordination of services.8 This represents an evidence gap for data to inform interventions and policy changes, including measurement data to suggest causal links that support continuity of community-based interventions.7 8 Measures to reduce this evidence gap and to address the disadvantage that young children and families experience due to inequity, have potential to improve cognitive, physical and social outcomes by up to 70%.1 In response to this gap, evidence for integrated care will be mapped through a scoping review. This a priori protocol follows the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) framework for scoping review method; the question is guided by the inclusion criteria ‘population,’ ‘concept’ and ‘context’.9 10 Population is represented by the first 2000 days of life; the concept is the design/model and delivery/experience of integrated specialist care, in the context of community-based specialised services.

Population: The first 2000 days represent a critical period for ongoing health, behaviour and learning.11 12 In this period of development during pregnancy up to age 5 years, neurobiological pathways are shaped forming a trajectory for ongoing health, behaviour and learning.12 Children at risk of poor outcomes of development, including developmental disability and delay, are protected through early diagnosis and timely intervention.13 Within a systems model, we understand that beyond intrinsic neurobiological pathways, children experience risk through negative environmental determinants.14 These include family and community factors such as maternal depression, intergenerational trauma, neighbourhood safety and social inequity.12 14–16 Environmental determinants also encompass the natural and built physical environment, including greenspace, housing and transport, healthcare infrastructure (including policies and practices) and access to health promotion programmes.7 14 Inequity is defined as ‘an unfair or ethically problematic difference’ in developmental outcomes.17 Although the risk to children’s development is highest in low-income and middle-income countries, inequity carries a cost to development in any country. This risk is exacerbated by barriers to specialised intervention for children and families in the first 2000 days, such as long waitlists, high costs, inequitable access, and lack of available services.18 19

Concept: The concept of integrated care includes many aims and strategies and is not narrowly defined.20–22 Definitions include the concepts of case management, multidisciplinary work, chains of care between organisations through partnership and collective accountability, and a whole system approach.21 Systematic reviews of integrated care, however, reach consensus on two broad principles. First, that the focus of care extends beyond organisational structure, and second, that family centred care must be a central component of any definition.6 21 The first principle relates to methods to organise, fund and deliver care in a co-ordinated way, informed by emerging policies and practices. The second relates to goals of patient and family centred care, shaped by context, and measured by outcomes including consumer experience.6 20 21 Aims and expectations of integrated care can conflict, for example, some models of care aim to show reduced cost. This may conflict with providing time and space for consumers to partner in their own care.6 12 21 Models of integrated care must be specific to the context of the population they aim to serve.22 Consistent measurement of outcomes will provide a continual feedback process to inform context specific policy and practice23 using a plan–do–study–act (PDSA) cycle.24 PDSA will be informed by a broader methodological approach,24 beginning with a map of existing services and environmental determinants in the community, consumer and stakeholder engagement, and this scoping review.

Context: Early childhood interventions provide universal, targeted or specialised support to promote and protect health and learning for children and families across the whole of society. Ideally, integrated care will span these levels of support to empower families and communities to provide nurturing care, including those who experience difficulty in accessing services due to a history of trauma and adversity.25 A rigorous meta-analysis revealed mixed, and sometimes contradictory, findings on the effectiveness of integrated care on outcomes of interventions for chronic conditions in children aged 0–18 years in high-income countries, including asthma, diabetes and obesity.6 An evidence gap is also reported for ‘specialist’ interventions including developmental delays and disorders, maternal depression and intergenerational trauma.26 Subsequent delays in early intervention represent a missed opportunity to provide interventions when the brain is most adaptable.11 For example, a reliable diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is possible by age 24 months, however in Australia the most frequently reported age of diagnosis for children under 7 years of age was 71 months.27 Time to diagnosis was influenced by sociodemographic factors, including long wait lists for specialised services.27

Wolfe et al6 identified ‘concerns about the design and evaluation of children’s integrated care,’ and recommended a research focus on this topic. No studies reviewed presented a logic model to inform development of the intervention or a theoretical framework to guide how interventions were selected or measured.6 Authors of recent systematic reviews have consistently identified a lack of evidence around models to guide implementation of integrated care through policy and practice.6 20 21 In relation to children’s services, Wolfe et al6 identified an additional gap in measurement and recommended development of a ‘validated measure to assess the level of integration in healthcare’ (Wolfe, p8).6 In response to these identified gaps, we conducted a preliminary search for systematic or scoping reviews on 23 April 2021, and again on 14 October 2021 using free text title and abstract [tiab] terms ‘early childhood’ or ‘early child*’ or ‘maternal and child’ and ‘integrated’ or ‘specialist health care’ or ‘specialist healthcare’ or ‘specialist health-care’ and ‘community health’ or ‘community health service’. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms included ‘systematic review’ or ‘scoping review’ and ‘child health services’ and ‘delivery of health care, integrated’ and ‘specialist’. Search platforms included Pubmed, Cochrane, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Ovid MEDLINE Subject Headings, Epistemonikos, Evidence for Policy and Practice Information. No review was found to meet the objective to identify models of integrated care, or measures to evaluate integrated care for children and families in the first 2000 days (the search strategy is included as online supplemental file 1). This article presents a scoping review protocol to synthesise available evidence.

Review question

What models, theoretical design and methods of formal evaluation are used for integrated specialist community-based health service provision for the first 2000 days?

Protocol methods/design

The JBI scoping review framework will be followed9 (see online supplemental file 2 for completed protocol checklist). Inclusion and exclusion criteria for screening of literature is predefined, and guided by ‘population, concept, context’ (see table 1). We are reviewing community-based integrated care, underpinned by comprehensive primary healthcare.28 Comprehensive primary healthcare incorporates physical and psychosocial contexts of health and well-being, developing sustainable relationships with individuals, families and communities to promote community participation and control over their health services. The focus is on equity, access, empowerment and intersectoral partnerships.28 In contrast, selective primary healthcare is based on a health practitioner model of care and does not focus on social determinants of health or equity.29 Health planning associated with selective primary care aims to provide cost-effective programmes with defined outcomes, for example, immunisation and screening programmes.29 Studies specific to selective primary care and general practice will be excluded.

Dissemination and ethics

The results will be translated to initially inform practice in one community. The scoping review will comprise one part of a three phase study to match integrated specialist early years services to priorities identified by the community. In addition to the scoping review, the overall study will comprise evidence synthesis from mapping of existing health, education and welfare specialist services, and a community consultation. Ethics approval (Curtin University HRE2021-0546) has been granted for a community consultation with consumers and specialist care providers using qualitative research methods. Led by an NGO, synthesis of the three phase study will inform the development of a context-specific integrated service to support families and children during the critical developmental period of the first 2000 days. This will provide an evidence base to reduce issues of access to services faced by communities, thereby lowering the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. Results will be disseminated by peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.