We’re proud to share the work of our NYU-TIES colleague, Alice Wuermli, and her coauthors, who have just published the first major paper of their ongoing pre-natal birth cohort study in Bangladesh.

This cohort profile paper outlines the study's foundations, sets the stage for future publications, and offers a powerful reminder of why early childhood research matters—not just for developmental science, but for creating real-world impact in diverse contexts. At Global TIES we are committed to bridging rigorous evidence with meaningful action.

Read Alice’s post to learn more about the study’s insights and the implications they hold for early childhood initiatives. Kudos to Alice and the entire research team for their hard work and dedication.

Delivering early-childhood programs at scale is a major policy challenge. One way to do so is by using existing public infrastructure. This paper experimentally assesses the short-term effects of a new government home-visiting program integrated into health-care services. The program changed the allocation of time for community health workers by asking them to carry out tasks related to early-childhood development. We find that access to the program has a positive but modest effect on home environment quality and no effect on child development or on children’s health status. Our results point to the importance of workload, supervision, and buy-in from delivery actors to enhance fidelity of interventions.

Gaps in child development by socio-economic status (SES) start early in life, are large and can increase inequalities later in life. We use recent national-level, cross-sectional and longitudinal data to examine inequalities in child development (namely, language, cognition and socio-emotional skills) of children 0–5 in five Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay). In the cross-section analysis, we find statistically significant gaps with inequality patterns that widely differ across countries. For instance, gaps in language and cognition for Uruguay and Chile are much smaller than those for Colombia and Peru. When turning to the longitudinal data, average SES gaps are similar to those of the cross-section in language but differ substantially in cognition, mainly in Uruguay where they emerge as more unequal when cohort effects do not operate. Importantly, we also find that the ECD gaps found at early ages (0–5) still manifest 6–12 years later in almost all locations and realms in which we have measures of early child development, but they do not increase with age. Results are robust to using different measures of inequality (income and maternal education). Gaps are smaller but generally remain when adjusting for possible explanatory factors (e.g. family structure, parental education, geographic fixed effects). To reduce ECD inequality and promote equality in later life outcomes, policymakers should look to implementing evidence-based interventions at scale to improve developmental outcomes of the most disadvantaged children in society.

Despite the immense challenges of economic crises, power outages, and unreliable internet, caregivers in Lebanon’s hard-to-access areas went to extraordinary lengths to ensure their children could participate in remote early childhood education. Their profound commitment to learning and resilience in the face of adversity underscores the critical role of early education, even in crisis settings.

Building on our team at NYU’s Global TIES for Children’s impact findings from a three-arm randomized controlled trial—showing significant impact on child development from a short remote ECE intervention—this newly published qualitative article offers a deeper, behind-the-scenes perspective. Applying Weisner’s ecocultural framework, we explore how caregivers integrated remote early learning into their daily lives, navigating cultural and environmental constraints. While theory suggests that intervention success depends on aligning with participants’ routines, our findings reveal that these programs thrived despite the absence of structured daily rhythms, demonstrating remarkable adaptability.

Our mixed-methods research challenges the common narrative by showing that remote ECE programs can, in fact, provide quality learning opportunities for children facing adversity. The study highlights the resilience of caregivers and teachers, offering valuable insights for designing flexible, impactful educational interventions in crisis-affected and resource-limited settings.

Delivering early-childhood programs at scale is a major policy challenge. One way to do so is by using existing public infrastructure. This paper experimentally assesses the short-term effects of a new government home-visiting program integrated into health-care services in Brazil. The program changed the allocation of time for community health workers by asking them to carry out tasks related to early-childhood development. We find that access to the program has a positive but modest effect on home environment quality and no effect on child development or on children’s health status. Our results point to the importance of workload, supervision, and buy-in from delivery actors to enhance fidelity of interventions.

This paper explores how SEL is perceived and implemented in the primary schools of conflict-affected Diffa, offering a unique lens into the diverse interpretations of SEL by various stakeholders.

Through a meticulous analysis of 58 semi-structured interviews encompassing a broad spectrum of perspectives—from Ministry officials and NGOs to school directors and parents—this study uncovers five distinct conceptualizations of SEL. Each reflects the priorities and concerns rooted in the stakeholders' experiences with conflict, trauma, psychosocial challenges, poverty, and religious beliefs. These findings highlight the varied expectations and objectives for SEL among different groups and show the complexity of integrating such programs in environments where education itself is under siege by myriad challenges.

Authors: Sarah Kabay, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Lindsay Brown. 

KEYWORDS: Primary Education, Sub-Saharan Africa, Emotional Learning, Social Development, Conflict Resolution

This study explores patterns of self-regulation and emotional well-being among Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, employing a person-centered approach, responding to theoretical challenges articulated by Dante Cicchetti and other psychologists. Using latent profile analysis with data from 2,132 children, we identified seven distinct profiles across cognitive regulation, emotional-behavioral regulation, interpersonal regulation, and emotional well-being. These profiles showed significant heterogeneity in patterns of self-regulation across domains and emotional well-being among Syrian children. Some profiles consistently exhibited either positive (“Well-regulated and Adjusted”) or negative (“Moody and Frustrated”) functioning across all domains, while others revealed domain-specific challenges, e.g., particularly sensitive to interpersonal conflict. This heterogeneity in the organization of self-regulatory skill and emotional well-being challenges the traditional homogeneous view of child development in conflict settings. The study also underscores the profiles’ differential associations with demographic characteristics and experiences, with school-related experiences being particularly salient. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research in developmental psychopathology on self-regulation and emotional well-being in conflict-affected contexts. In addition, we advocate for tailored interventions to meet the diverse needs of children affected by conflict.

Building on the evidence from the first paper in this Series highlighting the fundamental importance of healthy and nurturing environments for children's growth and development in the next 1000 days (ages 2–5 years), this paper summarises the benefits and costs of key strategies to support children's development in this age range. The next 1000 days build on the family-based and health-sector based interventions provided in the first 1000 days and require broader multisectoral programming. Interventions that have been shown to be particularly effective in this age range are the provision of early childhood care and education (ECCE), parenting interventions, and cash transfers. We show that a minimum package of 1 year of ECCE for all children would cost on average less than 0·15% of low-income and middle-income countries' current gross domestic product. The societal cost of not implementing this package at a national and global level (ie, the cost of inaction) is large, with an estimated forgone benefit of 8–19 times the cost of investing in ECCE. We discuss implications of the overall evidence presented in this Series for policy and practice, highlighting the potential of ECCE programming in the next 1000 days as an intervention itself, as well as a platform to deliver developmental screening, growth monitoring, and additional locally required interventions. Providing nurturing care during this period is crucial for maintaining and further boosting children's progress in the first 1000 days, and to allow children to reach optimal developmental trajectories from a socioecological life-course perspective.

🔗 Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01390-4