The key to improving children’s health is changing the behaviour of adults, according to nurse Laura Lynn Jackson.

Ms Jackson, of the Department of Health, who spoke at Hamilton Rotary Club yesterday, urged parents and other adults to play their role in creating healthier habits.

“Five-year-olds don’t shop, they don’t cook and they don’t prepare food,” she told The Royal Gazette.

“It’s adult behaviour we have to address that will affect children.”

In her speech, she said: “The goal is to strengthen students and families for self-care that is age-appropriate.

“Remember, children are a microcosm of what the adult population are doing, so these are our concerns as it relates to blood pressure and body mass index, not just for children but also for the adult population.”

Ms Jackson gave Rotarians an overview of child health services, focusing primarily on the services provided under the Child Health Programme. She honed in on areas of school health, travel health, immunisation and one “wildly important goal” ­— a health ministry initiative to address the rise of diabetes and obesity.

Under that initiative, students, parents and staff will be involved in monitoring children’s lunch and fitness, in both the public and private school sectors.

Data collection, she said, is an important component of the department’s aim to ensure “healthy people in healthy communities”.

The department is also encouraging “askable parents”, by helping them communicate effectively with their children, especially regarding their development and sexuality.

The aim is to create awareness about access to services and “to prepare young persons to become healthcare consumers for the future”.

The department has been seeing most positive results in its vision-screening service. She said: “It turns their life around. We know students who are not hearing or seeing correctly in school can tune out and if we don’t identify that and provide some adaptive devices or settings, it really does impair them for that learning opportunity.

“This is a beneficial service that provides a remarkable difference.”

One club member asked about the trend in resisting certain types of immunisation. Ms Jackson responded: “What we haven’t captured in Bermuda is qualitatively why persons are resisting.

“There are people who don’t prioritise it. There are those with issues of risk perception. The risks associated with any adverse effects get greater attention than the absence of the disease. By and large most of the vaccine hesitancy anecdotally is related to those who don’t make it a priority. We’re really back to health-seeking behaviour again.

“We have challenges. Public health globally is often considered the Cinderella of the health services and Bermuda is no exception. We are affected by constrained resources, both human and physical.

“There is a need to strengthen the information system and there is a need to strengthen the use of the health literacy tools by the community and health professionals alike.

“These are tools that help us to empower and facilitate decision-making in health-seeking behaviour as individual participants in their own healthcare.

“In public health we’ve always done more with less.”

Ms Jackson said the dedication and commitment of staff was undiminished by reduced funding. Their efforts, she added, could be summed up with Nelson Mandela’s quote: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”.

“And to that I say thank you,” she said.