Australian Primary Health Care guidelines for childhood growth, health, and development in the early years: a scoping review

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify and synthesise recommendations for growth monitoring, health behaviour screening, and health promotion advice within current Australian documents that guide Primary Health Care practitioners to support childhood growth, health, and development in the early years. 

Methods: Documents were identified using Google Advanced Search and targeted website searching. An iterative inductive and deductive content analysis was conducted and contextualised using the 5W (who, what, when, where, why) + 1H (how) framework. 

Results: All included documents (n = 18) recommended growth monitoring. Recommendations to screen and promote child health behaviours (diet, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, or sleep) were fragmented and provided limited guidance on how to screen and promote child health behaviours in practice. 

Conclusions: Documents recognised the importance of screening and promoting child health behaviours in Primary Health Care; however, comprehensive recommendations were limited. Practical tools and resources are needed to enable Primary Health Care practitioners to conduct effective and appropriate screening and health promotion and across all four health behaviour domains.

Implications for Public Health: There is opportunity for guidelines to recommend and integrate health behaviour screening tools into routine PHC practice to better support children's growth, health, and development in the early years.