Prenatal to Age Three: What Programs Can Enhance Development?

The Future of Children journal is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. Its mission is to translate the best social science research about children and youth into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, grantmakers, advocates, the media, and students of public policy. The Future of Children publishes one journal and policy brief each year, in addition to pursuing other projects. The policy topics covered range widely—from education to health to families—with children as the unifying element.

This project supports the development of an issue of The Future of Children that addresses how to effectively deliver programs to all mothers and young children to enhance health, development, and overall well-being. The journal presents the best evidence about which programs have been found to be most effective in each of the domains that are most important for early child development, and examines how programs’ effects vary among different groups of children (for example, according to race, gender, and immigration status). Articles also offer thoughts about how the next generation of programs can be improved, including those addressing maternal mental health, healthcare, maternal sensitivity and attachment to infants and toddlers, maternal reading and learning activities with infants and toddlers, access to childcare, screening and intervention for developmental delay, and home visiting.

Learn more about The Future of Children.