Bright Futures

A closeup of a baby girl wearing a pink headband with a bow as she looks into the camera.

Bright Futures is a national health promotion and prevention initiative led by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The Bright Futures Guidelines provide theory-based and evidence-driven guidance for all preventive care screenings and well-child visits. 

Implementing the HealthySteps approach will help your team streamline the implementation of Bright Futures, enhancing your work with children and families while supporting practice transformation and innovation.

The success of Bright Futures implementation—and HealthySteps—requires everyone on the health care team to participate in improving the lives of babies, toddlers, and their families. By adding a HealthySteps Specialist to your team and deploying the HealthySteps approach, the entire practice, from the front desk to providers and data administrators, will be able to support comprehensive team-based care for all families with young children.

We know that pediatric primary care providers have a lot to accomplish in visits that can last just 15 minutes. With HealthySteps, you can accomplish the Bright Futures’ recommended services (disease detection, disease prevention, health promotion, and anticipatory guidance) and go beyond by offering all eight HealthySteps Core Components. HealthySteps will help you improve the quality of care you provide to your patients.

Cutting-edge practices use the HealthySteps approach because the AAP has recognized the promise of pediatric primary care beyond physical health, urging pediatric primary care providers to address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in their practices, as well as the effects of toxic stress and poverty.