Center on Child Progress Launched

The Graduate School of Education and the School of Public Health have teamed up with the Children’s Hospital in Boston in the creation of a new virtual center to investigate child development, the institutions announced last Tuesday.

Research conducted through the new center, dubbed the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, will focus on the role a child’s environment has on his or her biological development.

“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 the earliest years of life,” said Jack P. Shonkoff, director of the new center and professor of child health and development at the School of Public Health (HSPH) and Graduate School of Education (GSE), in a press release.

“We know that children thrive in nurturing environments,” said Gillian A. Najarian, deputy director of the new center. The center’s research will attempt to elucidate the “causal mechanism” that makes this true, she adds.

“Shonkoff has an inspiring vision for the center—to equalize opportunities early in life for all children to reach their full potential,” GSE Dean Kathleen McCartney said.

Shonkoff is the founding chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Prior to this appointment, Shonkoff was dean of the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

The idea for the center was first discussed in the summer of 2005, when HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom and McCartney both reached out to Shonkoff with the idea of creating a program on child development even more comprehensive than the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.

“The Council is a wonderful model of public engagement,” Najarian said. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child, however, will expand to include “three spheres of activity.”

The first will be the “generation of new knowledge,“ focusing on the scientific research behind understanding childhood development.

The second sphere will focus on transmitting new scientific knowledge to the next generation of leaders, and the final aspect will serve as a public engagement model.

Because Shonkoff teaches at both the HSPH and GSE, it is natural that the center will initially encompass faculty primarily from those two schools, Najarian said.

The center, however, will try to eventually build research teams spanning all of the University’s graduate schools, including the Business School and the Kennedy School of Government.

“The center is a University-wide entity, and reports directly to the Provost’s office,” Najarian said.

The announcement of the new center occurred at a “Child Health and Development in the 21st Century” symposium honoring the former U.S. surgeon general and Harvard Medical School professor emeritus of health policy, Julius B. Richmond.