Children's health, the nation's wealth: Assessing and improving child health

Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth provides a conceptual framework for improving the assessment of child health and ultimately the health of children. The central question is whether the will of the nation to improve the lot of its children will continue to lag behind our scientitic capabilities to do so. The next steps require a road map that can integrate the report's framework into a series of actions. This is a strategic time of opportunity because of our exploding understanding of important interactions between the genome and the environment as well as our unparalleled capacity to integrate extensive and complex data sets. It would be unfortunate if we did not take advantage of these new capacities. The report offers an opportunity to enhance the well-being of our children. It offers a challenge to us all that our children and the nation cannot afford to pass up.