Family-Centered Care: Current Applications and Future Directions in Pediatric Health Care

Family-centered care (FCC) is a partnership approach to health care decision-making between the family and health care provider. FCC is considered the standard of pediatric health care by many clinical practices, hospitals, and health care groups. Despite widespread endorsement, FCC continues to be insufficiently implemented into clinical practice. In this paper we enumerate the core principles of FCC in pediatric health care, describe recent advances applying FCC principles to clinical practice, and propose an agenda for practitioners, hospitals, and health care groups to translate FCC into improved health outcomes, health care delivery, and health care system transformation.