BOCYF Projects: Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development

Efforts to promote the health and development of young children and families have evolved within a highly fragmented infrastructure of services and intervention programs. Separate service streams have developed in health promotion and primary medical care, child care for children of working parents, preventive intervention and family support for children in poverty, therapeutic and family support interventions for children with developmental delays or disabilities, and specialized mental health services. As the demand for more comprehensive yet economically feasible approaches to unmet early childhood needs grows, the problems inherent in the fragmented infrastructure of categorical services have become more pronounced. Attempts to promote greater integration have focused on bureaucratic and political dimensions of interagency communication and coordination, not on articulating a unified underlying science of early childhood development informed by an understanding of basic health and developmental needs.

To address this gap, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families has launched a Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. The committee will synthesize and critique the interdisciplinary scientific literatures on early development to identify new insights and cross-cutting themes for future initiatives, articulating the implications of developmental science for parents, professionals, and institutions that care for and rear young children. Over the course of two years, committee members will:

review and synthesize the relevant research and theoretical literatures across domains of development--including the neurobiology of development, cognitive-linguistic development, and social-emotional competence--and across the spectrum of typical and atypical development;
describe the distinctive characteristics of children from birth to age 5, the developmental changes that occur during these years, and the extent of variability and plasticity that characterize this age period, placing this knowledge in the context of subsequent development;
integrate this knowledge with a broader understanding of the environmental and sociocultural factors that affect development and behavior during the first five years and set children on differing developmental trajectories, and
articulate the implications of this science of early childhood development in an integrated research agenda geared toward improved interventions and service strategies across a wide range of categorical service systems.

The study is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (all of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); by the Commonwealth Fund and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; and by National Academy of Sciences funds.