Children's Health Programs in California: Promoting a Lifetime of Health and Well-Being

Ensuring the health and well-being of children is fundamental to supporting families and strengthening communities across California. Public investment and related public policies can play a central role in keeping children and their families healthy. This is especially important for children living in poverty, who are more likely than other children to face short- and long-term health challenges.

California Budget & Policy Center's report Children’s Health Programs in California: Promoting a Lifetime of Health and Well-Being looks at our state’s health care system for children and their families, including both public health care coverage and public health programs. This report shows the size and scope of these programs, who they benefit, and the services they provide. In addition, this report highlights some of the key opportunities and challenges California now faces in promoting children’s health, in the wake of the Great Recession and with the implementation of federal health care reform.

Children’s Health Programs in California: Recent Years’ Budget and Policy Changes — a brief companion piece to the main publication — provides a timeline of major policy choices made in the past several years that have shaped our state’s health system for children.

The Children’s Health Programs in California project was made possible by a grant from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health.