In this article, Amanda Williford, Jason Downer, Kate Miller-Bains, Jenna Conway, and Lisa Howard tell us how a university research center, an early education advocacy group, and a state department of education joined forces in a research-practice partnership to develop and implement a more comprehensive assessment of young Virginia children's…

Building a research-practice partnership that spans two or more organizations can be challenging. University researchers, for instance, may find themselves in schools or departments where the incentives and culture favor more individualistic, single-discipline research projects. Practitioners and policy makers may not see the value of investing in…

In this article, Rachel Abenavoli, Natalia Rojas, Rebecca Unterman, Elise Cappella, Josh Wallack, and Pamela Morris argue that research-practice partnerships make it possible to rigorously study relevant policy questions in ways that would otherwise be infeasible. Randomized controlled trials of small-scale programs have shown us that early…

Research-practice partnerships often face a fundamental tension: well-designed, high-quality research takes time, but practitioners and policy makers need answers to pressing questions as soon as possible. In this article, Jason Sachs, Meghan McCormick, JoAnn Hsueh, and Catherine Snow discuss this mismatch between the tight timelines of…

Funders are primarily concerned with the impact of the work they support. Yet traditional research activities may take years to be complete, and it may take even longer to determine whether the research had any impact on policy or practice. In a place-based research-practice partnership, collaborative construction of research questions ensures…

In 2014, New York City launched its Pre-K for All program, which rapidly tripled the number of children in free, full-day prekindergarten. Two years later, the city rolled out ThriveNYC, a citywide mental health initiative with a focus on early childhood. By this time, a team from New York University's medical school had partnered for nearly two…

One of the first steps in developing a research-practice partnership is forming a joint research agenda. In this article, Michael Strambler, Joanna L. Meyer, Clare Waterman Irwin, and George A. Coleman describe the collaborative process that Connecticut's Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) used to develop an agenda driven by…

Health care reaches more children under age three in the United States than any other family-facing system and represents the most common entry point for developmental assessment of and services for children. In this article, Adam Schickedanz and Neal Halfon examine how well the child health care system promotes healthy child development early in…

Many children, especially those from lower-income families, face considerable instability early in their lives. This may include changes in family structure, irregular family routines, frequent moves, fluctuating daycare arrangements, and noisy, crowded, or generally chaotic environments. Moreover, instability and chaos affect young children's…

In this article, Ajay Chaudry and Heather Sandstrom review research on child care and early education for children under age three. They describe the array of early care and education arrangements families use for infants and toddlers; how these patterns have changed in recent decades; and differences by family socioeconomic status, race, and…

Is income during children's earliest years a key determinant of long-term child and adult success in the longer run? The research to date, Christopher Wimer and Sharon Wolf write, suggests that it is. Wimer and Wolf review substantial descriptive evidence that income can enhance child development and later adult outcomes, and that it does so most…

Mother and child wellbeing are intimately connected during pregnancy and the first 12 months of the infant's life. The fetus and child directly experience the mother's life and are shaped by it. A mother's environmental experiences, physical health, and psychological distress affect her interactions with her infant, which in turn have…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

The early home language environment, and parents in particular, form the foundation of children's language development. In this article, Dina Kapengut and Kimberly Noble explore the intersection of neuroscience and developmental psychology to explain how language experiences in the home, and the "home learning environment" more broadly,…

Nutrition is vitally important both during pregnancy and during a child's early years. Inadequate nutrition during this critical period can harm children's health and developmental outcomes throughout childhood and into adulthood. Thus, write Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and Betsy Thorn, it's particularly important that young children have adequate…