Educational Program

Focusing on early and universal child development is potentially the most promising strategy to break the vicious intergenerational cycle of poverty that is perpetrating an increasingly inequitable and unjust world order. Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar and his team at Community Empowerment Lab will evaluate whether a simple package of essential newborn care practices, such as community-based skin-to-skin care, that is readily scalable and can be adopted by the poorest of families, can lead to improvements in long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) has been associated with better cognition in some developed countries. In this project scientists from Makerere University (Uganda) and Centre Muraz (Burkina Faso) will assess whether EBF promotion enhances human capital formation including cognitive function, mental and general health, among a cohort of 5-7 year old children.

Crowdfunding and social networks as a novel mechanism to sustainably promote physical growth and positive psychosocial and neuro-developmental outcomes in severely stunted Guatemalan children

The South African Vertical Transmission Study supported HIV-positive and HIV-negative women to exclusively breastfeed their infants in a rural area of South Africa where mixed breastfeeding (i.e. breastmilk and other fluids and solids) was the norm. We aim to investigate whether this early feeding intervention is associated with further benefits for children, in terms of development, health and school readiness.

The effects over early brain development of a nurse home visitation program for pregnant youth and their families living in a poor urban area in São Paulo, Brazil