Bright Futures has four goals that will allow it to carry out its mission of improving the health of our nation’s children, families, and communities. These goals are to:

• Work with states to make the Bright Futures approach the standard of care for infants, children, and adolescents;
• Help health care providers shift their thinking to a prevention-based, family-focused, and developmentally-oriented direction;
• Foster partnerships between families, providers, and communities; and
• Empower families with the skills and knowledge to be active participants in their children’s healthy development.

Bright Futures at AAP
AAP has been involved with Bright Futures since the beginning, and in 2002 we were chosen to develop and carry out the next phases of the initiative. With the encouragement and strong support of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration, the AAP and its many collaborating partners updated the Bright Futures Guidelines again as a uniform set of recommendations for health care professionals. The result is the third edition of the Bright Futures Guidelines and its accompanying Pocket Guide. A Bright Futures Toolkit will be released in 2008. The third edition will take the place of AAP’s Guidelines for Health Supervision.

Since 2002, AAP has coordinated Bright Futures efforts at the local, state, and national levels through the Bright Futures National Education Center. The Center’s mission is to enhance the knowledge of health care professionals and the public about Bright Futures and about the value of clinically based health promotion and prevention.

The Bright Futures Education Center carries out its mission through a variety of integrated strategies:

• Establishing and maintaining partnerships with a wide variety of health care professional and public health organizations, families, states, corporations, foundations, and federal agencies to promote and advance the Bright Futures initiative in diverse settings
• Fostering the adoption of the Bright Futures approach by identifying promising practice models, disseminating those models to child and adolescent health professionals and key stakeholder organizations, and providing technical assistance
• Providing training, continuing education, and assistance on Bright Futures child health promotion and prevention content and philosophy to health professionals, families, states, communities, and other partners
• Building Bright Futures outreach efforts, such as the Bright Futures newsletter and Web site, which promote the Bright Futures initiative
• Update and maintain key Bright Futures tools and guidelines

For more information about Bright Futures, visit our Frequently Asked Questions.