Science tells us that the early childhood period is a time of both great opportunity and considerable risk, and its influence can extend over a lifetime. The foundational importance of the early years is currently appreciated across the political spectrum, and there is growing recognition that families, communities, the workplace, and government each have a shared interest and distinctive role to play in assuring the healthy development of all young children. Stated simply, the science of early childhood and brain development is strong, the moral imperative for preventive action is compelling, and the potential social and economic returns on investment are substantial. The time has now come to build on the best policies and programs we have—and figure out how we can do better. After more than 40 years of program refinement and transformative advances in the science of early childhood development, it is time to leverage new knowledge and build on current best practices in the service of generating and testing new ideas to produce substantially greater impacts on the lives of disadvantaged children and their families.
The Center is now committed to take on a more challenging and complex agenda—to work collaboratively with selected policymakers, policy analysts, practitioners, scientists, scholars, and other creative thinkers who are motivated to engage in the kind of transformational thinking that is needed to drive significant innovation in early childhood policy and practice. This ambitious agenda is fueled by three core principles:
- The compelling need to develop and test new logic models or theories of change that are shaped by science, creativity, and pragmatism.
- The importance of an expanded definition of evidence that includes well-established, peer-reviewed, scientific concepts as well as benefit-cost data and the results of randomized controlled studies.
- An acknowledgment that science alone is rarely sufficient to fully inform policy and practice, and the recognition that evidence-based decisions are most often guided by reasonable hypotheses based on incomplete knowledge.
Community-Based Laboratories
The first example of the Center’s interest in establishing community-based laboratories to develop more effective early childhood interventions is the Tulsa Children’s Project, a collaborative effort with Tulsa Educare Center and the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa and its School of Community Medicine. This pilot project is currently testing the feasibility of implementing selected components of an enhanced, two-generation intervention model that integrates state-of-the-art, bilingual early literacy and preventive mental health services linked to a medical home and focused on children and parents; a parent workforce development and family economic security component; and a quality-improvement infrastructure. More >>
