Deep Dives
Health in the earliest years — beginning with the future mother’s well-being before she becomes pregnant — strengthens developing biological systems that enable children to thrive and grow up to be healthy adults. Positive early experiences provide children with a foundation for building sturdy brain architecture, which supports a broad range of skills and learning capacities throughout the lifespan.
See the latest from the Center on lifelong health:
The biology of health explains how experiences and environmental influences “get under the skin” and interact with genetic predispositions.
“Early experience literally is built into our bodies, for better or for worse.”
The resulting physiological adaptations or disruptions affect lifelong outcomes in learning, behavior, and both physical and mental well-being. Science tells us:
Extensive scientific research has identified three basic foundations of lifelong health that are laid down in early childhood.
Ensuring that children have a healthy start to life requires the support of family members, early childhood program staff, neighborhoods, voluntary associations, and parent workplaces. The caregiver and community capacities that enable adults to strengthen the foundations of child health can be grouped into three categories:
Nearly any policy or program that touches the lives of children and families is an opportunity to improve lifelong health outcomes.
“People like to say that children’s health is our nation’s wealth, but until we really start to act on these ideas…we will not get to being a healthier population and a more prosperous society.”
Within both the public and private sectors, policies and programs can benefit children by enhancing the capacities of their caregivers as well as the communities in which they develop. Relevant policies include legislative and administrative actions that affect public health, child care and early education, child welfare, early intervention, family economic stability, community development, housing, environmental protection, and primary health care. The private sector can also play an important role in strengthening the capacities of families to raise healthy and competent children, particularly through supportive workplace policies.
The graphic shows a series of four arrows, one after the other, each pointing right, moving from left to right. Each arrow represents a facet of policy or programming innovation to help enhance children’s lifelong health. The arrows exist in a larger oval labeled “Settings” which describe where these innovations can take place. The oval includes the following labels as examples of settings: “Workplace,” “Programs,” “Neighborhood,” and “Home.” The last of the arrows points to a circle labeled “Health and Development Across the Lifespan.” Within the circle are listed stages of life, moving from Preconception to Prenatal to Early Childhood to Middle Childhood to Adolescence and finally to Adulthood. The labels on the four arrows are as follows, in order from left to right:
