Why Intervene Early?
By the Ounce of Prevention Fund
Why is it so important to ensure that children have quality care and educational experiences in the earliest years of life? A nurturing and supportive environment during a child’s first years lays the foundation for future success in school and life. To truly appreciate why this time of life is so crucial, it helps to understand a little bit about brain science and development.
The first years of life: What does science tell us?
During the first several years of a child’s life, the brain forms over 1 million neural connections every second.
Babies’ brains are quite literally wired to learn. This rapid absorption of information creates new neural connections and builds the architecture of a baby’s brain. For comparison, adult brains have thicker, but fewer, synaptic connections.
This makes adults more efficient at doing what they’ve done before — e.g. speaking, writing and reading — but less effective at learning new things, such as a foreign language.
Synapse density over time
The figure [below] illustrates the rapid rate at which synapses are formed in the first few years of life. One can see that adults have thicker, but fewer synaptic connections.
Everything in a child’s environment — experiences, relationships with parents and caregivers and environmental factors — influences brain development and growth. It is no surprise, then, that early experiences have a profound impact on a child’s future ability to succeed in school, work, and life.
The importance of early interventions
Secure and nurturing early childhood experiences form strong neural connections, which enable children to acquire language and communication skills, learn how to interact with people and their surroundings, and develop the ability to regulate their emotions.
Sadly, too many children — especially those living in poverty — face chronic stress and adversity which hinder their ability to learn and increase their chances of falling behind developmentally and academically for years to come. Fortunately, there’s a wide body of research that demonstrates that interventions, particularly in the first years of life, make a difference.
Studies on high-quality, comprehensive early childhood programs, such as the Carolina Abecedarian Project, the Perry Preschool Project, the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, as well as Educare schools, demonstrate that early childhood interventions promote positive results in emotional development, school readiness, academic achievement, and family life.
How does the science on brain development influence our research on early interventions?
The research conducted at the Ounce of Prevention Fund is anchored by science. Building upon decades of studies on brain development and early childhood education, the organization conducts high-quality research and help translate this research into practice — with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families early in life.
One example of how our research comes to life is demonstrated by the work of Educare schools. The Ounce opened the first Educare school in 2000 on Chicago’s South Side using a research-based curriculum and serving low-income infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and their families. Now part of a nationwide network of 23 schools, known as the Educare Learning Network, these schools are prime examples of the positive outcomes stemming from high-quality early education programs.
After just one year at an Educare school, children show improved language skills, fewer problem behaviors, and more positive interactions with parents. Children who enrolled in Educare schools earlier, and stayed until they entered kindergarten, also displayed stronger vocabulary skills — just one of many positive indicators of effective early intervention. Years of rigorous evaluations of Educare programs indicate these outcomes.
Yet, Educare is just one example of how existing science and our own rigorous research join to create and promote high-quality early learning experiences. Ultimately, our research aims to reinforce the existing evidence supporting the importance of early education, while also informing and advancing improvements in the field as a whole.
“All of our research is done in partnership with practitioners and/or policymakers and advocates. As part of our effort to become the country’s most trusted resource for early childhood knowledge, we conduct research with the overarching goal of generating new knowledge and contributing to the field’s understanding of how to improve the quality of programs and systems, promote positive outcomes, and transform practices and policies at scale,” said Amanda Stein, director of research and evaluation at the Ounce.
Since 1982, the Ounce of Prevention Fund has persistently pursued a single goal: that all children living in America — particularly those born into poverty — have quality early childhood experiences in the crucial first five years of life. The work of the Ounce anchored in a growing body of scientific evidence about early brain development. The Ounce uses private dollars to apply that science in developing innovative programs, and then leverages public funding to support implementation and replication.