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Connecting Science and Community is a portfolio of work at the intersection of developmental biology, direct services for young children and families, and place-based activism focused on strengthening the foundations of healthy development and achieving positive life outcomes for children facing the burdens of poverty, racism, and other structural inequities.
ECD 2.0
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child
Measuring Stress and Resilience
Over the past decade, a dedicated group of change agents—including scientists, pediatric healthcare providers, community leaders, and parents—has been developing a battery of measures of stress activation and resilience in young children. The goal is to strengthen the capacity to prevent, reduce, or mitigate stress-related problems in development or health before overt symptoms appear, evaluate the impacts of interventions, and provide credible reassurance when children are doing well despite experiencing adversity.
Place-Based Initiatives
A Call to Action
A convergence of advances in scientific knowledge and community-driven impacts provide a powerful new opportunity to improve the current life circumstances and future life prospects of all young children, particularly those facing the burdens of generational poverty, systemic racism, and/or other structural inequities. Recognizing that science alone cannot provide all the answers—and by working together and drawing on multiple sources of knowledge and lived experience—we can achieve far larger impacts on child health and development than either direct services for children and families or place-based interventions have been able to accomplish by themselves. Our approach to this challenge is driven by asking questions, listening carefully, and learning from those engaged on the ground about how we might contribute to their quest for far greater impacts.
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
Founded in 2006, the mission of the Center on the Developing Child is to leverage the power of science in pursuit of better, more equitable outcomes for young children facing adversity. Through two decades of synthesizing and communicating knowledge from across disciplines, the Center has helped shape the way the public understands and thinks about early childhood development, closing the gap between what we know and what we do to support children and their caregivers through science-informed policy and practice. Center Founding Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., now leads the Connecting Science and Community initiative. Learn more about the Center ‘s work at https://developingchild.harvard.edu/