Integrating Universal Healthcare in Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Community Development (IHSD)
The early years of life are crucial to establishing a sound foundation for cognitive, social, emotional and physical development for the rest of children’s lives. Universal health coverage and nurturing care framework policies ensure holistic child care, however, many children in Siaya County seem to lack holistically child care in their education as we spend our energies on treatment rather than prevention services which are more cost effective. The major question this study sought to respond to was “How do preschools integrate universal health care services in early childhood education? This is an action research design utilizing both quantitative and qualitative tools of data collection and is informed by humanizing child development theory as proposed by Eugene M. De Robertis, 2008.The participants for this project included 1400 preschool teachers. Instruments of data collection included questionnaires for pre-school teachers, interview schedule for teachers and document analysis of curriculum, teacher preparation materials, and health care records. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data utilized thematic analysis approach
