As part of its Global Children’s Initiative, the Center is launching Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. In collaboration with local experts, this project aims to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to benefit young children and their families in Brazil.
Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância is a collaboration between the Center, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of São Paulo, and Insper. This project represents a unique opportunity for the Center to work with Brazilian scholars, policymakers, and civil society leaders to adapt the Center’s programmatic model for the local context in order to catalyze more effective policies and programs that will, ultimately, foster a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable society.
Together, these organizations will engage in the following activities:
- Building a scientific agenda and community of scholars around early childhood development;
- Synthesizing and translating scientific knowledge for application to social policy. This will include working with the Center’s longtime partner organization, Frameworks Institute, to effectively communicate the science of child development in the Brazilian cultural context;
- Strengthening leadership around early childhood development through an executive leadership course for policymakers;
- Translating and adapting the Center’s existing print and multimedia resources for a Brazilian audience.
Videos em Português
Four of the Center's videos, Brain Hero and the 3-part video series Three Core Concepts in Early Development, have been translated and adapted for a Brazilian audience as part of its collaboration with local experts to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to benefit young children and their families in Brazil. The translation and adaptation of these videos into Portuguese was provided by Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal.
Brazilian Scholar Visits Center as Research Fellow
During 2012, Alexandra Brentani, Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical School of the University of São Paulo (FMUSP) in Brazil, worked at the Center on a three-month visiting research fellowship. While here, she worked closely with Center-affiliated faculty member Günther Fink, a health economist at the Harvard School of Public Health, and other members of the Harvard faculty on a joint research project.
In addition to her academic work, Brentani is part of the management group for the Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância (NCPI) initiative in Brazil, of which the Center is a part. Brentani is one of the leaders of the effort to develop a Brazilian scientific community on early childhood development that will lead the synthesis and translation of science for application in policy and practice.
Learning and Leading: Brazilian Policymakers Chart a New Course with the Science of Child Development
The mood was buoyant and collegial, but the stakes were high—planning a better future for children in a country experiencing rapid economic growth and wide societal disparities. This group of nearly 50 Brazilian politicians, policymakers, public managers and civil-society leaders had come together for the first time just five days earlier. What united them—both physically and philosophically—was an executive leadership course on early childhood development, which was hosted by the Center.
Sign up to receive the Center's e-mail newsletter and other announcements >>
Subscribe to the Center's RSS feed for news and announcements >>
Follow the Center on the Developing Child on Twitter >>
