News Features & Releases

Harvard Establishes Center to Advance Scientific Understanding of Children, Their Health, and Education;
Symposium honors former U. S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond on 90th birthday

Posted: September 26, 2006

Harvard University today announced the establishment of a new research and policy center bringing together neuroscientists, molecular biologists, and a range of social scientists to advance understanding of the biology of health, learning, and behavior in young children.

The establishment of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child was announced at a day-long symposium entitled "Child Health and Development in the 21st Century," honoring the 90th birthday, life, and work of former U.S. Surgeon General and Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus, Julius B. Richmond, M. D. Richmond was a pioneer in advancing understanding of the fundamental needs of young children. (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/richmond/)

The new Center is a collaborative of faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School-affiliated Children's Hospital Boston. It will ultimately involve faculty based in all of Harvard's Schools and affiliated hospitals, generating and translating new knowledge into policies and practices to build strong foundations for healthy individual development and sustainable community well-being.

Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., Professor of Child Health and Development, with appointments in the Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, and Children's Hospital Boston, has been named Director of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. The Center's core focus is based on the premise that early life experiences literally shape the architecture of the developing brain and influence the maturation of biological systems that affect learning capacity and physical and mental health well into the adult years.

"Our mission is simple yet profound," said Shonkoff. "Our objective is to produce new knowledge and close the gap between what we know and what we do to promote the healthy development of children. To this end, we will devise science-based strategies to reduce inequalities in opportunity early in life, and will work to build broad-based support for implementing those strategies in both the public and private sectors. We view the use of science to improve life prospects for all children as both an important moral responsibility and a wise social and economic investment."

The ultimate goal of the Center, said Shonkoff, "is to address the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, both in the United States and globally, by learning more about the underlying biological mechanisms that lead to these disparities. Central to this work will be the investigation of how extraordinary stress related to deep poverty, abuse, neglect, and/or discrimination affects the development of the brain beginning in the earliest years of life."

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who is scheduled to speak at the Symposium, said Julius Richmond, who served as Surgeon General under President Jimmy Carter, "taught us that mental health is an integral part of general health and well being, and that a child's first years are critical to healthy development...Our obligation now is to continue his work until every child has an equal opportunity to realize his or her full potential."

And in a letter to be read at the Symposium, former President Carter noted that Richmond, the first director of the federal Head Start program, and the first Surgeon General to establish national health goals, "improved the lives of literally millions of children and adults in our country and around the world, and future generations will be healthier because of his work."

"We are incredibly fortunate to add this university-wide effort to the growing collection of interdisciplinary initiatives at Harvard that tap the work of the world's leading scientists to push the boundaries of knowledge," said Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman. "This Center takes a critical next step--creating new scientific understanding about health, learning, and behavior in the early years of a child's life and using that understanding to help strengthen individual life outcomes and improve society in the process."