The following is excerpted from NYU Shanghai’s coverage of the symposium “Child Health and Wellbeing: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice.” Access the full article on the NYU Shanghai website.
When it comes to children’s wellbeing, physical health may be what first comes to mind. More recently, mental health is being seen as an important indicator of their overall health and well being. In academic circles, scholars have been exploring methods and approaches to ameliorating children's mental health.
Additionally, fostering a psychologically and emotionally stable learning environment for the next generation is not only seen as a priority but an imperative. On March 19, a symposium at NYU Shanghai on “Child Health and Wellbeing: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice” addressed that topic with speakers from a diverse range of fields, including sociology, psychology, global public health, medicine, and humanities.
NYU Shanghai, NYU Silver School of Social Work, and Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine collaborated to organize the symposium. Approximately 200 people attended the symposium at the New Bund campus and online, including students, researchers, and practitioners from clinics, hospitals, schools, and social service fields across China.
NYU Shanghai Professor Qingwen Xu, who coordinates the NYU Shanghai-NYU Silver MSW Program at Shanghai and New York, says the symposium’s focus on the intersection of children’s health and mental health has never been more crucial. “It's time to talk about the children,” she said. “In China, there is a great amount of attention particularly, in recent years, on the mental health of children. We're in the process of constructing and promoting the social workers’ role in children’s life, as social workers can be quite useful and meaningful in settings like schools and hospitals.”
In her opening speech at the symposium, Provost Joanna Waley-Cohen highlighted the universal importance of public health and child welfare.
“There are certain things that we all have in common wherever we live, whoever we are, whatever we believe in,” she said. “And for each and every one of us, the most precious resource that we have is the next generation. It is vitally important to take care of their wellbeing in every possible way.”
The conference featured leading researchers and scholars from around the world who shared trends and future developments in the arena of children’s health and wellbeing. In a session on Child Health and Environment, moderated by Ji Qingying of the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, NYU Silver School of Social Work Dean and American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare President Michael A. Lindsey discussed suicide behavior trends among U.S. adolescents and provided an analysis of ethnocultural differences in risks and protections. Jiang Fan, professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, spoke about the focus shift from child survival to child development in China and practice implications for medicine, education and social services. Wan Guowei, a professor at East China Normal University, shed light upon the prevalence of child abuse, PTSD, and risk factors for gender-based child protection policies in China. NYU Silver School of Social Work Professor Ramesh Raghavan illustrated his new conceptualization and indicators of child well-being and findings on investing in child well-being.
Scholars also presented research on physical and mental health and intervention services, which was moderated by NYU Shanghai Clinical Associate Professor Jin Minchao.