While these factors can exert a powerful infl uence on the health and development of children, public health practitioners recognize that health outcomes, as well as health behaviours, parenting and breastfeeding practices and family dynamics are infl uenced by external socio-economic and psychosocial environment in which an individual lives. External risk factors include poverty, neighbourhood characteristics, environmental exposures and psychosocial responses to impoverished conditions (., social isolation, violence and depression). Accordingly, the OPHS, along with a number of local, provincial, federal and international reports, reaffi rm that strategies to reduce (child) poverty, address the determinants of health.
