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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development and Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined
We know that responsive relationships and language-rich experiences for young children help build a strong foundation for later success in school. The rapidly advancing frontiers of 21st-century biological sciences now provide compelling evidence that the foundations of lifelong health are also built early, with increasing evidence of the importance of the prenatal period and first […]
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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: Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body
A growing understanding of how responsive relationships and language-rich experiences for young children help build a strong foundation for later success in school has driven increased investment and sparked innovation in early learning around the world. The rapidly advancing frontiers of 21st-century biological sciences now provide compelling evidence that the foundations of lifelong health are […]
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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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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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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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Health and Learning Are Deeply Interconnected in the Body: An Action Guide for Policymakers
We know that adult-child relationships, other early experiences, and environmental exposures influence child well-being. An increasing number of policies and programs around the world now reflect that understanding by supporting children’s early learning and nutrition to improve their readiness to succeed in school. As scientific knowledge continues to grow, we also know more clearly than […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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, 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 […]