About Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children, and Adolescents

Whose responsibility is it to promote children’s health and what resources are out there to help people from many different disciplines get involved?

According to Bright Futures, a national health promotion and prevention initiative, led by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and supported by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration—promoting children’s health is everybody’s business. Bright Futures provides the framework and tools that can be used by many diverse audiences—from pediatric health professionals, to state public health program directors, home visitors, school nurses, parents, and many others.

The Bright Futures Guidelines are recognized in the Affordable Care Act as the authoritative standard for pediatric preventive health care. The evidence-informed Bright Futures Guidelinesserve as the blueprint for all health supervision visits (often referred to as well-child visits). Now is the time for all pediatric health care professionals, states and communities to put Bright Futures into practice.

AAP’s Bright Futures National Center, with guidance from a multidisciplinary steering committee and support from a communications contractor, determined that a brief, engaging video would be the most effective medium to increase awareness of the Bright Futures initiative, its philosophy, and resources. Release of the video, timed to coincide with the launch of the new mobile friendly Bright Futures Web site, would ensure maximum exposure.

Over the course of 6 months, the team determined that a lively, animated approach was the best way to depict a culturally appropriate and engaging video that simplified the complex concepts and philosophy about Bright Futures. Throughout the various stages of video development and production—scripting, mood board and character development, storyboards, and rough cuts—feedback from steering committee members and other experts was solicited and incorporated.

Details such as the surface of the playground that conformed to current safety standards, appropriate helmets for the baseball scene, nutritious food on display for the family meal—all of these images and more, were subjected to careful review. Modifications were applied to ensure that the script was accurate, scenes were realistic, and images and content were consistent with AAP policy, and with Bright Futures Guidelines.

Distribution of the video has begun through the recently redesigned Bright Futures Web site launched in April 2015 which will be promoted through the Bright Futures eNews, partner outreach, and other AAP communication channels and Web sites. The video is also avaialbe via YouTube on the aaptv channel and is intended for use as an opening segment of Bright Futures workshops and presentations by pediatricians, state leaders and others to provide a brief and entertaining overview of Bright Futures and the importance of promoting children’s health.

Evaluation will include Web metrics, feedback from Web users to be gathered through usability testing, and participant feedback to be gathered during workshop/conference presentations of the video throughout 2015. Evaluation results will help inform future development of videos in this series, including a video in Spanish for families to emphasize the importance of family engagement for effective shared decision-making.