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MINI BRIEF

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Health and Learning Are Interconnected:
An Action Guide for Policymakers

Three key messages can help guide our thinking in a time when innovation has never been more needed in public systems in order to improve both health and learning.

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BRIEF

Moving Upstream: Confronting Racism to Open Up Children’s Potential

This new brief discusses how racism creates conditions that harm the well-being of children and families, and the need to go "upstream" and create policy solutions to address the source of structural, cultural, and interpersonal racism.

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MULTIMEDIA

How Early Childhood Experiences Affect Lifelong Health and Learning

In this animated video, narrated by Center on the Developing Child Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., 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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ANNOUNCEMENT

The 2021-2022 Science and Innovation Fellows

Introducing the Science and Innovation Fellows

Three Harvard doctoral students have been awarded the Science and Innovation Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year.

Three Harvard doctoral students have been awarded the Science and Innovation Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year.

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GUIDE

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A Guide to COVID-19 and Early Childhood Development

This guide for practitioners explains the science behind our core life skills, what affects their development, and how practitioners can help.

This guide pulls together information on what the outbreak means for child development, and easy-to-share resources that can help everyone from parents and caregivers to child care providers and pediatricians.

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VIDEO

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Stress & Resilience: How Toxic Stress Affects Us, and What We Can Do

This guide for practitioners explains the science behind our core life skills, what affects their development, and how practitioners can help.

When the stress in your life just doesn’t let up, it can seem like there’s nothing that can make it better. But there are resources that can help, and toxic stress doesn’t have to define your life.

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WORKING PAPER

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Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body

This Working Paper examines how developing biological systems in the body interact with each other and adapt to the contexts in which a child is developing—for better or for worse—with lifelong consequences for physical and mental health.

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Reaching for Breakthroughs with Science-Based Innovation

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The science of early childhood is a source of new ideas that could be used to develop more effective policies & services focused on the early years of life.

Browse Key Concepts | Browse Deep Dives

Learn more and browse all of Science
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Using current best practices as a starting point, the Center works with a network of fellow change agents to design, implement, and evaluate innovative, science-based practice models that achieve transformational change for vulnerable children and families.

Our Innovation Model | Innovation in Action

Learn more about Innovation & Application
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Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. To bring about lasting, population-level change for children facing adversity, we must foster a movement of collective change.

Browse Key Concepts | Learning Communities in Action

Learn more about Collective Change

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