Childhood Development refers to the physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotionaldevelopment of a child from the prenatal stage up to age eight. This development happens in a variety ofsettings (homes, schools, health facilities, community-based centers) and involves a wide range ofactivities from child care to nutrition to parent education. Providers of services can include public,private, and non-governmental agencies. Early Childhood Development encompasses a number ofdistinct sub-stages, each of which presents particular needs Pregnancy and pre-natal prenatal care,attended births, registration, postnatal care 0 to 3 parent education, early stimulation and nutritioninterventions, home-based care, crèches 3 to 6 parent education, preschool 6 to 8 transition to formaleducation, improved early primary school From a development point of view, children who come fromthe most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds need good-quality services and care the most,including children with special needs for early childhood development. To ensure a nation‘s childrendevelop well, adequate investment in early childhood development is essential.
Immunisation has been a proven and one of the mostcost-effective child survival interventions in the world.1Every country has its own immunisation programmeto provide selected vaccines to the targeted group ofpopulation, generally focusing on infants and children,and pregnant women, who are at a high risk of diseasespreventable by vaccines. There are at least 27 causativeagents against which vaccines are available and manymore agents are targeted for development of vaccines.2The number of antigens used in the immunisationprogrammes varies from country to country. However,there are a few selected antigens which are given againstdiphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles andhepatitis B which are part of immunisation programmesin most of the countries in the world. The first vaccine,against small pox, was discovered in 1798, and fromthe early 18th century, the British health administrationintroduced vaccination against small pox in the Indiansub-continent.3 The first doses of smallpox vaccinelymph in India arrived in May 1802.4 The most strikingsuccess of these efforts has been the eradication ofsmallpox disease from the world.5 EPI is implemented in192 countries of the world. But data shows that despitebeing a proven cost-effective preventive public healthintervention, the benefits of immunisation is not reachingmany children who are at risk of the diseases preventableby these vaccines. Majority of the children who do notreceive these vaccines live in the developing countries. Itis important to understand the underlying factors whichcauses non-immunisation of children and specifically, inBangladesh, in this review article.
The 2018 special issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences on implementation research and practice for early childhood development brings together emerging evidence on implementing effective nurturing care programs, addressing issues of quality and scale. Translating evidence to practice requires addressing the barriers perceived by policy makers, which have been highlighted in the published literature. Here, I describe how UNICEF and other global partners are addressing these barriers.
The Community of Practice is a space to share knowledge and promote dialogue between different stakeholders. This Community of Practice will build upon the knowledge and networks created during the implementation of the diverse portfolio of projects of the ECD Financing partnership, the recently created ECD Hub, the large knowledge created by other organizations, and the community of innovators that has been growing across the region in recent years. More than 50 civil society organizations have joined this Community to support and promote the ECD agenda in the region.
Replication data and code for: Deshpande, A., & Ramachandran, R. (2025). Discriminatory social norms and early childhood development. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 238, 107245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107245 Description: This replication package contains the Stata code and datasets used to reproduce results and figures in the published paper. The analysis draws on the 2015–16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) of India, merged with original data on distance from the Vindhyas. Users can either (i) recreate the cleaned dataset from the raw DHS files using the provided scripts, or (ii) directly run the replication do-files to reproduce Tables 1–6 and Figures 2–7. Contents: 1. Data preparation script (prep_data_for_analysis_AD_RR_JEBO_107245.do) 2. Main replication script (Replication_figs_2_6_7_Tables_2_3_4_5_6.do) 3. District-level replication script (replication_Table1_Fig3.do) 4. Final datasets (nfhs_replicationdatafinal.dta, Table1_Fig3_data.dta, and dhscluster_vindhyadist.dta) Source data: NFHS-4 (India 2015–16) from the DHS Program: GPS shapefile – IAGE71FL.ZIP | Geographic covariates – IAGC72FL.ZIP | Birth recode – IABR74DT.ZIP All accessible at https://dhsprogram.com/data/dataset/India_Standard-DHS_2015.cfm?flag=0
Importance: Screen time has become an integral part of children's daily lives. Nevertheless, the developmental consequences of screen exposure in young children remain unclear. Objective: To investigate the screen time trajectory from 6 to 72 months of age and its association with children's development at age 72 months in a prospective birth cohort. Design, Setting, and Participants: Women in Shanghai, China, who were at 34 to 36 gestational weeks and had an expected delivery date between May 2012 and July 2013 were recruited for this cohort study. Their children were followed up at 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 72 months of age. Children's screen time was classified into 3 groups at age 6 months: continued low (ie, stable amount of screen time), late increasing (ie, sharp increase in screen time at age 36 months), and early increasing (ie, large amount of screen time in early stages that remained stable after age 36 months). Cognitive development was assessed by specially trained research staff in a research clinic. Of 262 eligible mother-offspring pairs, 152 dyads had complete data regarding all variables of interest and were included in the analyses. Data were analyzed from September 2019 to November 2021. Exposures: Mothers reported screen times of children at 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 72 months of age. Main Outcomes and Measures: The cognitive development of children was evaluated using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 4th edition, at age 72 months. Social-emotional development was measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which was completed by the child's mother. The study described demographic characteristics, maternal mental health, child's temperament at age 6 months, and mental development at age 12 months by subgroups clustered by a group-based trajectory model. Group difference was examined by analysis of variance. Results: A total of 152 mother-offspring dyads were included in this study, including 77 girls (50.7%) and 75 boys (49.3%) (mean [SD] age of the mothers was 29.7 [3.3] years). Children's screen time trajectory from age 6 to 72 months was classified into 3 groups: continued low (110 [72.4%]), late increasing (17 [11.2%]), and early increasing (25 [16.4%]). Compared with the continued low group, the late increasing group had lower scores on the Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (β coefficient, -8.23; 95% CI, -15.16 to -1.30; P < .05) and the General Ability Index (β coefficient, -6.42; 95% CI, -13.70 to 0.86; P = .08); the early increasing group presented with lower scores on the Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (β coefficient, -6.68; 95% CI, -12.35 to -1.02; P < .05) and the Cognitive Proficiency Index (β coefficient, -10.56; 95% CI, -17.23 to -3.90; P < .01) and a higher total difficulties score (β coefficient, 2.62; 95% CI, 0.49-4.76; P < .05). Conclusions and Relevance: This cohort study found that excessive screen time in early years was associated with poor cognitive and social-emotional development. This finding may be helpful in encouraging awareness among parents of the importance of onset and duration of children's screen time.
INTRODUCTION: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, was set up in 2000 to improve access to vaccines for children living in the poorest countries. Funding has increased significantly over time, with Gavi disbursements reaching US $1.58 billion in 2015. We assess whether Gavi's funding programmes have indeed increased immunisation coverage in 51 recipient countries for two key vaccines for 12-23 month olds: combined diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) and measles. Additionally, we look at effects on infant and child mortality. METHODS: Taking a difference-in-differences quasi-experimental approach to observational data, we estimate the impact of Gavi eligibility on immunisation coverage and mortality rates over time, using WHO/UNICEF figures covering 1995-2016. We control for economy size and population of each country as well as running a suite of robustness checks and sensitivity tests. RESULTS: We find large and significant positive effects from Gavi's funding programmes: on average a 12.02 percentage point increase in DPT immunisation coverage (95% CI 6.56 to 17.49) and an 8.81 percentage point increase in measles immunisation coverage (95% CI 3.58 to 14.04) over the period to 2016. Our estimates show Gavi support also induced 6.22 fewer infant deaths (95% CI -10.47 to -1.97) and 12.23 fewer under-five deaths (95% CI -19.66 to -4.79) per 1000 live births. CONCLUSION: Our findings provide evidence that Gavi has had a substantial impact on the fight against communicable diseases for improved population and child health in lower-income countries. In this case, the health policy to verticalise aid-specifically development assistance for health-via a specialised global fund has had positive outcomes.
OBJECTIVE: To support evidence informed decision-making, we systematically examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of community engagement interventions on routine childhood immunisation outcomes in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) and identify contextual, design and implementation features associated with effectiveness. DESIGN: Mixed-methods systematic review and meta-analysis. DATA SOURCES: 21 databases of academic and grey literature and 12 additional websites were searched in May 2019 and May 2020. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES: We included experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations of community engagement interventions considering outcomes related to routine child immunisation in LMICs. No language, publication type, or date restrictions were imposed. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Two independent researchers extracted summary data from published reports and appraised quantitative risk of bias using adapted Cochrane tools. Random effects meta-analysis was used to examine effects on the primary outcome, full immunisation coverage. RESULTS: =94.46). The most common source of risk to the quality of evidence (risk of bias) was outcome reporting bias: most studies used caregiver-reported measures of vaccinations received by a child in the absence or incompleteness of immunisation cards. Reasons consistently cited for intervention success include appropriate intervention design, including building in community engagement features; addressing common contextual barriers of immunisation and leveraging facilitators; and accounting for existing implementation constraints. The median intervention cost per treated child per vaccine dose (excluding the cost of vaccines) to increase absolute immunisation coverage by one percent was US$3.68. CONCLUSION: Community engagement interventions are successful in improving outcomes related to routine child immunisation. The findings are robust to exclusion of studies assessed as high risk of bias.
Monica Jain, Shannon Shisler, Charlotte E. Lane et al.
Children’s early experiences and environments profoundly impact their development; therefore, ensuring the well-being of children through effective supports and services is critical. Evaluation is a tool that can be used to understand the effectiveness of early childhood development (ECD) practices, programs, and policies. A deeper understanding of the evaluation landscape in the ECD field is needed at this time. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the state of evaluation in the ECD field across four constructs: community-driven evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, evaluation capacity building, and evaluation use and influence. A comprehensive search of 7 electronic databases, including Canadian and international literature published in English from 2000 to 2020, was conducted. A total of 30 articles met the inclusion criteria. Findings demonstrate that some studies include aspects of a community-engaged approach to evaluation; however, comprehensive approaches to community-driven evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation, evaluation capacity building, and evaluation use in the field of ECD are not commonly achieved. This review will inform strategies for bridging evaluation gaps in the ECD sector, ultimately equipping organisations with the evaluative tools to improve practices, programs, and policies that impact the children, families, and communities they serve.
Giulia Puinean, Rebecca Gokiert, Mischa Taylor et al.
Maternal education is often considered an important determinant of children's early development. However, there is little empirical evidence on whether it is maternal education that contributes to better developmental outcomes or other ecological factors that relate to both education and children's development. This study used data on 4,874 mother-child (M age = 47.7 months) dyads from Uganda of the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey to assess the effects of maternal education on parenting and children's development. Taking advantage of a natural experiment with an instrumental variables approach, the study identified positive causal impacts of maternal schooling on children's development. Additional years of schooling also increased maternal engagement in stimulating activities, children's attendance to early childhood education programs, and reduced harsh corporal punishment. A mediation analysis suggested that increases in maternal stimulation and children's attendance to early childhood education programs and reductions in harsh corporal punishment partially explain the effects of maternal education on children's development. The positive impacts of education on parenting and child development indicate the need for more efforts to expand access to education in Uganda and other low- and- middle-income countries, including the abolishment of school fees for primary education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
