ABSTRACT
In the model, health and sickness are described as the product of four determinants: physical factors, health behaviour, the social and physical environment, and finally the care system. This chapter focuses on the social and physical environment of children and parents as a health determinant. It should be made clear that one is concerned with a very broad range of factors about which only extremely fragmentary scientific data are as yet available. Being based on an ecological health model, pre-school Child Health Care cannot ignore the relevant influences from their social and physical environment on the health and wellbeing of parents and children. This is by no means to say that doctors and district nurses working in this field have no attention or eye for such a line of approach. However, the problem is that activities in this direction are not as yet a structural part of their duties and therefore often take place on an ad hoc basis.
