Who's Taking Care of the Children? Child Care, Health Equity, and the Workforce we Overlook

Child care is often treated as a private family concern or an education issue, but it is also a health equity issue. This talk explores how the early childhood workforce-particularly home-based child care providers--supports children's development, family stability, and community well-being, and why overlooking that workforce carries consequences for health across the life course. Drawing on more than 25 years of work with home-based child care providers and early childhood policy, Janna Wagner will make the case that child care is essential social infrastructure and explore what that means for health, policy, and the people doing the work.