Black – 2016 Lancet Series

In 2016 – released and published in 2017 – there was a third series on child development.  This series focused primarily on children who were under age three. The reason that we focused on that age is that there’s been a tremendous amount of science that illustrates that what happens very early in life impacts the rest of life. It impacts health, it impacts development and it impacts wellbeing and economic productivity and into the next generation. 

So we focused on the very, very early period – the period that is sometimes called the first thousand days. During the first thousand days there’s a tremendous amount of development that takes place. During that time development is exquisitely timed. That means as the brain is developing there are specific time periods when things are happening, when myelination starts, when the neural tube closes, when synaptogenesis starts, when the auditory and visual cortex are formed. If you miss those times then you miss aspects of development because that part of the brain happens, those developments happen at very, very specific times. 

So we’ve learned a lot from the neuroscientists and from the child development specialists, from the economists, from paediatricians, from anthropologists, from nutritionists, and so by 2017 the science behind early child development was really coalescing. It’s far from over, but we know enough now to know that if you’re interested in investing in brain development, what happens very early in life matters.