Home
Connecting Science + Community
Expanding the Early Childhood Ecosystem to Achieve Greater Impacts
A new framework to catalyze fresh thinking and concrete actions to strengthen the foundations of healthy development by partnering with leaders and innovators at the intersection of early childhood science, direct services for children and families, and place-based initiatives.
A new framework to catalyze fresh thinking and concrete actions to strengthen the foundations of healthy development by partnering with leaders and innovators at the intersection of early childhood science, direct services for children and families, and place-based initiatives.
Connecting Science + Community is an initiative that brings together advances in early childhood science, direct services for children and families, and place-based initiatives. Our aim is to build on current best practices and listen carefully to families raising young children. Our goal is to help achieve better life outcomes for all children facing the burdens of poverty, economic insecurity, racism, and/or other sources of adversity. Our dreams for CSC are tempered by humbleness—given the complexity of the challenges—but driven by a sense of urgency.
Child Development 2.0
Measuring Stress and Resilience
Over the past decade, a dedicated group of scientists, pediatric healthcare providers, community leaders, and parents has been developing a set of measures of stress activation and resilience in young children. Our goals are to strengthen the capacity to prevent, reduce, or mitigate stress-related problems in development and health before overt symptoms appear, evaluate the impacts of interventions to increase their effectiveness, and provide credible reassurance when children are doing well despite experiencing adversity.
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child
This multidisciplinary group of world-renowned researchers and scholars has a 20-year history of effectively synthesizing, distilling, and communicating the science of early childhood development and its underlying biology. Its mission is to help close the gap between what we know and what we do to support all children’s well-being.
Place-Based Initiatives
Fueled by a belief in the power of place as a pathway to social and economic mobility and racial equity, a growing number of community and neighborhood leaders are expressing interest in an expanded science framework to strengthen the front end of what they call the “cradle to career (or college) pipeline.”
Catalyzing a Mindset Shift
Calling for a shift in the way the early childhood field thinks about priorities and strategies is simple to say but challenging to do. That said, a convergence of advances in trusted scientific knowledge, individualized services, and community-driven action provides a powerful new opportunity to achieve greater impacts on the early development and future life prospects of young children. Driven by ECD 2.0, in partnership with community leaders working for change, we can expand mindsets for early childhood policy–from one that understands success as separate sectors providing direct services for children and families to one that sees a coordinated approach balancing individualized programs and community well-being as the expectation and norm. With particular attention to the strengths and needs of families facing the burdens of inter-generational poverty, economic insecurity, systemic racism, and/or other sources of adversity, we can increase the impacts of our investments in young children now and promote more promising futures for millions more over time.
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 played a major role in shaping the way the public understands and thinks about early childhood development, thereby informing how we support children and their caregivers through science-informed policy and practice. Center Founding Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., now leads the Connecting Science + Community initiative. Learn more about the Center‘s work at https://developingchild.harvard.edu/