The Healthy Child Programme: how did we get here and where should we go?

A Child Health Promotion programme has developed over the last century. Its remit and content has been revised and updated over the last 50 years. The current programme, the Healthy Child Programme, enshrined in law, offers a comprehensive schedule of checks, reviews and support from pregnancy to 19 years of age. This is the first nationally agreed programme, and yet we are not clear whether it is achieving what it sets out to do. We review the aims of the HCP and ask whether it is doing too little or too much? We explore the outcomes that matter and assert that we often don't have the data to make this judgement. We call for more data and argue for the importance of getting to know your local data, in advocating for children and young people. We ask paediatricians to step up and take a role in the promotion of health and wellbeing of families in their care: child public health is everybody's business.