Bright Futures Practice Guides were developed over the past several years to address selected child health priority issues in depth. These Guides complement the Bright Futures Guidelines and provide useful material for health care professionals and others. AAP is in the process of updating these Practice Guides to ensure consistency with the recently released Third Edition of the Guidelines.
We will periodically update and expand this list of tools and resources. If you have materials you would like to share with others on these web pages, please visit the Contact Us page. Keep in mind that some of these resources have been developed by other groups using Bright Futures materials. Bright Futures is not responsible for the specific content of these outside resources.
Oral Health
Healthy Foster Care America, Dental and Oral Health Needs 
This AAP site was developed as a place where professionals and partner organizations can find the latest information, facts, and figures on the health care of children and teens in foster care, including ready-to-use tools and resources. Foster parents or kin may also find these materials helpful in caring for the health needs of children and teens in their care. This page of the site provides recommendations and resources pertaining to the dental and oral health care needs of children in foster care.
A Health Professionals Guide to Pediatric Oral Health Management
This guide, a series of seven self-contained online modules, is designed to help health care professionals manage the oral health of infants and young children and prevent oral diseases. These diseases still afflict many U.S. children, especially children from families with low incomes, children in certain minority groups, and children with special health care needs.
Bright Futures in Practice: Oral Health - Pocket Guide
This pocket guide is designed to help health professionals implement specific oral health guidelines during pregnancy and postpartum, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, and it addresses risk assessment for dental caries, periodontal disease, malocclusion, and injury.
Bright Futures Oral Health Toolbox
This toolbox, developed by the National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center, highlights materials that advance the Bright Futures philosophy of promoting and improving the oral health of infants, children, and adolescents.
AAP Oral Health Initiative Web site
Various oral health resources can be found on this Web site, including: PedsCare, AAP oral health resources, community/state programs, oral health training, and oral health links. Contact information for PedsCare Oral Health Initiative is provided where comments, additional information, and suggestions can be sent.
Mental Health
Healthy Foster Care America, Mental and Behavior Health Issues and Needs 
This AAP site was developed as a place where professionals and partner organizations can find the latest information, facts, and figures on the health care of children and teens in foster care, including ready-to-use tools and resources. Foster parents or kin may also find these materials helpful in caring for the health needs of children and teens in their care. This page of the site provides recommendations and resources pertaining to the mental and behavioral health care needs and issues of children in foster care.
Bright Futures in Practice: Mental Health, Volume I
The information and resources in this guide provide primary care health professionals with the tools needed to promote mental health in children, adolescents, and their families. It also helps them recognize the early stages of mental health problems and mental disorders, and to intervene appropriately.
Bright Futures in Practice: Mental Health, Volume II - Tool Kit
This two-volume tool kit that accompanies Volume I, provides hands-on tools for health care professionals and families for use in screening, care management, and health education.
Physical Activity
Bright Futures in Practice: Physical Activity
This guide focuses on improving the physical activity status of infants, children, and adolescents; establishing health supervision guidelines focusing on physical activity (e.g., interview questions, screening and assessment, counseling); identifying desired health and physical outcomes that result from regular physical activity; encouraging partnerships among health care professionals, families, and communities; and increasing family knowledge, skills, and participation in developmentally appropriate physical activities.
Be sure to visit the family section of this Web site for materials on these topics.