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by Rafael Pérez-Escamilla. I was once asked by a top decision maker from a Latin American country, “Do you think giving a monetary incentive would persuade more mothers to breastfeed?” My first impulse was to say yes, go for it! I thought about the “breastfeeding gear model,” but then I asked myself, would providing monetary incentives work without first changing the adverse … [Read more...] about Breastfeeding or Work: A Woman Shouldn’t Have to Choose

Last week, the largest US program for early childhood development turned 50 years. The program, called Head Start, serves over one million children each year and it provides comprehensive services (education, nutrition, health, and parenting) to low-income children and families. … [Read more...] about A program that makes history

Research carried out in Chile and in Brazil shows that, regardless of socioeconomic status, parents tend to think that babies do not understand when they are talked to and that learning begins later on in life (in some cases as late as in the preschool years!). There is also little awareness of how important is the exposure to learning experiences early on for the development … [Read more...] about If Parents Only Knew

by Marta Rubio Codina.           The pioneering work of Sally Grantham-McGregor and colleagues in Jamaica and the impressive results of the so-called Jamaican study involved 129 chronically malnourished or stunted young children and 32 non-stunted children living in poor households in Kingston. Recent research has showed that the short-term improvements found in IQ after 2 … [Read more...] about Scaling Programs with Success