Developmental screening
Also known as: Bright Futures · developmental milestones · well-child visit
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Promoting Optimal Development: Identifying Infants and Young Children With Developmental Disorders Through Developmental Surveillance and Screening
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) · 2020 · 2020 clinical report (Pediatrics 145(1):e20193449)
An AAP clinical report describing how paediatric practices should build routine developmental surveillance into every well-child visit and add standardised screening tools at defined ages, with pathways to referral when concerns emerge. It updates the academy's 2006 algorithm.
- Produced by the AAP Council on Children with Disabilities and the Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. source
- Describes surveillance at every health supervision visit plus standardised developmental screening at the 9-, 18- and 30-month visits. source
- AAP separately recommends autism-specific screening at the 18- and 24-month visits, with added attention to development at the 4- to 5-year visit. source
Developmental follow-up of children and young people born preterm
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), UK · 2017 · NG72
NICE guideline NG72 sets out structured developmental follow-up for children and young people under 18 who were born before 37 weeks. It is the closest European national-level guidance to a formal developmental screening programme, though it is limited to the preterm population rather than all children.
US vs EU key differences
- Population scope differs entirely: the AAP report covers universal developmental surveillance and screening for all infants and young children, while NICE NG72 addresses only children and young people under 18 who were born preterm (before 37+0 weeks). source
- The AAP specifies fixed screening ages — standardised developmental screening at the 9-, 18- and 30-month well-child visits, plus autism-specific screening at 18 and 24 months — on top of surveillance at every well-child visit. source
What changed recently
- US2006 clinical report → 2020 clinical report (Pediatrics 145(1):e20193449)2019-12-16
The 2020 AAP report replaced the 2006 algorithm with a single unified surveillance-and-screening framework covering developmental, behavioural, social-emotional, autism-specific, motor and psychosocial concerns rather than separate parallel pathways. It sets out a new clinical algorithm, a comparison table of validated screening instruments, and explicit linkage from a positive screen into ongoing care and early intervention referral.
source ↗curation confidence 90%
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