Topic: lifelong health

All resources related to lifelong health are displayed below. View Deep Dives: Lifelong Health for an overview of this topic.

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The Foundations of Lifelong Health Are Built in Early Childhood

This report explains how the earliest years lay the groundwork for lifelong health.

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Foundations of Lifelong Health InBrief

InBrief: The Foundations of Lifelong Health

This brief explains why a vital and productive society with a prosperous and sustainable future is built on a foundation of healthy child development.

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InBrief: The Foundations of Lifelong Health

This edition of the InBrief series explains why a vital and productive society with a prosperous and sustainable future is built on a foundation of healthy child development.

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A cover image from the Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts paper, showing the title and an image of two parents kissing their baby

From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts

This report synthesizes 15 years of dramatic advances in the science of early childhood and early brain development, analyzes evidence generated by 50 years of program evaluation research, and presents a framework for driving science-based innovation in early childhood policy and practice.

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How Early Childhood Experiences Affect Lifelong Health and Learning

How is ongoing, severe stress and adversity in early childhood connected to chronic disease in adults? And, what can we do about it? In this animated video, learn what the latest science tells us about how early experiences affect not only early learning and school readiness, but also lifelong health.

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The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: Mental Health in a Locked-Down World

This episode of The Brain Architects addresses mental health amid the COVID-19 pandemic, including what supporting your own mental health can look like, as well as ways to support children you care for at this time.

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Cover image of working paper 15, "Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development and Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined"

Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development and Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined

The rapidly advancing frontiers of 21st-century biological sciences now provide compelling evidence that the foundations of lifelong health are built early, with increasing evidence of the importance of the prenatal period and first few years after birth.

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InBrief: Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body

The environments we create and the experiences we provide for young children and their families affect not just the developing brain, but also many other physiological systems, including cardiovascular function, immune responsiveness, and metabolic regulation.

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What Is Inflammation? And Why Does it Matter for Child Development?

Inflammation is a critical part of an immune system’s response to invaders and threats; it enables our bodies to attack infections and heal the damage they cause. Inflammation can also be triggered by other experiences, such as witnessing traumatic events or undergoing stressful circumstances, and this response helps our bodies to react to and survive […]

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Cover page of Health and Learning Are Deeply Interconnected Mini-Brief

Health and Learning Are Deeply Interconnected in the Body: An Action Guide for Policymakers

Three key messages from the science of early childhood development, adversity, and resilience can help guide our thinking in a time when innovation has never been more needed in public systems to improve both health and learning.

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How Racism Can Affect Child Development

Research suggests that constant coping with systemic racism and everyday discrimination is a potent activator of the stress response. This may help us understand the early origins of racial disparities in chronic illness across the lifespan.

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5 Facts About Health That Are Often Misunderstood

Did you know that interactions among genes, experiences, age, and environments influence every biological system in the body, with especially powerful effects in the earliest years? Learn five quick facts about health that are frequently misunderstood.

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The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: How Do We Rebuild and Re-Envision Early Childhood Services?

The devastating toll of the pandemic has underscored the critical importance of connecting what science is telling us to the lived experiences of people and communities.

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Man sitting in a chair reading to a baby sitting on his lap. (Photo by nappy from Pexels)

The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: A Different World

While the coronavirus pandemic has changed many things around the world, it has not stopped child development.

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Place Matters: The Environment We Create Shapes the Foundations of Healthy Development

The new working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explores the influence of the built and natural environments on child development and lifelong health.

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Place Matters: An Action Guide for Policy

An Action Guide to complement the new working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explores the influence of the built and natural environments on child development and lifelong health.

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children reading outside

Heat: An Action Guide for Policy

An Action Guide to complement the new working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment explores how extreme heat can affect young children’s biological systems and disrupt development, as well as the many ways it can amplify the effects of systemic inequities.

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El lugar es importante: Guía para la aplicación de políticas

An Action Guide to complement the new working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explores the influence of the built and natural environments on child development and lifelong health.

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Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health

This new working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment (ECSCEE) summarizes the current knowledge on how heat impacts the development of biological systems. It’s the first in a series from ECSCEE focusing on the ways that environmental conditions shape young children’s development.

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Aerial view of a neighborhood with houses, trees, parks, and streets (Photo by Brandon Jacoby on Unsplash)

The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: Creating Communities of Opportunity

While the current coronavirus pandemic is affecting all of us, it isn’t affecting all of us equally. In this episode, Dr. David Williams discusses ways in which the coronavirus pandemic is particularly affecting people of color in the U.S., and what that can mean for early childhood development.

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Young girl wearing face mask receives a vaccination

The Brain Architects Podcast: COVID-19 Special Edition: Self-Care Isn’t Selfish

In the second episode, Dr. Rahil Briggs, National Director of ZERO TO THREE’s HealthySteps program, discusses the current state of pediatrics, and why caregiver health is child health.

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Two boys look out a window (Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash)

How to Support Children (and Yourself) During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Even during this uncertain time, it’s a sure thing that our children are still learning, growing, and developing. But, supporting a child’s healthy development can be simple and free! (And, it may even help relieve your stress.) Here are four steps to focus on right now.

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Detail of the first panel of the "What is COVID-19" infographic

What Is COVID-19? And How Does It Relate to Child Development?

This infographic explains the basics of what COVID-19 is, and what it can mean for stress levels in both children and the adults who care for them. It also offers some easy and concrete solutions to help caregivers ensure that both they and the children they care for don’t experience long-term effects of stress.

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A child and caregiver wearing goggles and doing a science experiment at a children's museum

Play in Early Childhood: The Role of Play in Any Setting

In this video, learn more about how play can foster children’s resilience to hardship, and how the complex interactions involved when children play help build their brains.

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Epigenetics and Child Development: How Children’s Experiences Affect Their Genes

What is epigenetics? In this infographic learn about the science behind genes and their interaction with the environment — nature and nurture — and how these interactions affect child development.

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Brain Story Certification Course logo

Brain Story Certification Course

The Brain Story Certification course is designed for those seeking a deeper understanding of brain development and its consequences for lifelong health.

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Three Principles to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families

Understanding how the experiences children have starting at birth, even prenatally, affect lifelong outcomes—combined with new knowledge about the core capabilities adults need to thrive as parents and in the workplace—provides a strong foundation upon which policymakers and civic leaders can design a shared and more effective agenda.

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Social and Behavioral Determinants of Toxic Stress

In this science talk, David Williams looks at the social and behavioral factors that play a role in triggering toxic stress for children and adults.

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Child Development Core Story

This educational video series on the importance of the early years was created by the Project for Babies, a former initiative of the University of Minnesota Center for Early Education and Development.

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Brain Hero

This 3-minute video adapts the visual sensibility of interactive game models to a video format. Based loosely on such games as “Guitar Hero,” “SimCity,” and “The Game of Life,” the video portrays how actions taken by parents, teachers, policymakers, and others can affect life outcomes for both the child and the surrounding community.

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Three Core Concepts in Early Development

This three-part video series depicts how advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics now give us a much better understanding of how early experiences are built into our bodies and brains, for better or for worse.

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InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development

This video from the InBrief series addresses basic concepts of early childhood development, established over decades of neuroscience and behavioral research.

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The Science of Early Childhood Development: Closing the Gap Between What We Know and What We Do

This report outlines seven core concepts of development, and explains their implications for policies and programs that could significantly improve children’s lives.

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A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy

This report provides a framework for using evidence to improve child outcomes in learning, behavior, and health.

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Working Paper 9 cover

Persistent Fear and Anxiety Can Affect Young Children’s Learning and Development

This working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explains how early exposure to circumstances that produce persistent fear and chronic anxiety can have lifelong effects on physical and mental health.

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