Does attendance at preschool affect adult health? A systematic review

Background: Early child development interventions can set children on positive social and educational trajectories. The aim of this review was to examine the evidence for the adult health impacts of centre-based preschool interventions for preschoolers. Methods: Medline, Embase, ERIC, Psych Info, Sociological Abstracts, the Cochrane Library, C2-SPECTR and the Head Start database were searched (1980-2008), and reference lists were searched for articles missed by the electronic search. Results: The 12 eligible articles reviewed reported multi-faceted interventions and involved disadvantaged populations in all but one study. Limitations included a restricted range of health outcomes, reliance on self-report measures (11 studies), small sample sizes (nine studies with