New Lancet Series: Early Childhood Development and the Next 1000 Days

November 19, 2024 – Following the first 1,000 days of life that span from conception to two years of age, the ‘next 1,000 days’ of a child’s life from two to five years of age offer a window of opportunity to promote nurturing and caring environments, establish healthy behaviors, and build on early gains to sustain or improve trajectories of healthy development. This webinar launched the new two-part Lancet series on early childhood development, released on November 19.

The series focuses on the critical “next 1,000 days” of a child’s life, exploring why this period is essential for healthy development. It will address environments of care, risks, and protective factors shaping development, estimate the number of children receiving adequate nurturing care, and evaluate the effectiveness of current interventions in meeting their needs.

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) 181·9 million children ages 3 and 4 are not receiving nurturing care, thus jeopardizing their development. The series summarizes the evidence, benefits and costs of key strategies to support children’s development in this age range. It highlights the high cost of inaction, revealing that failing to implement a basic early childhood care and education (ECCE) package globally results in significant societal losses—potentially 8 to 19 times greater than the investment required for ECCE.

The series stresses the need to provide access to adequate nurturing care, including equitable access to high quality ECCE, safe and supportive environments with adequate stimulation, protection from physical punishment, adequate nutrition to all children, universal developmental screening, and financial support for vulnerable populations. Read The Lancet Series here.

Aisha Khizar Yousafzai

Aisha is the Professor of Child Development and Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, USA. Her work is situated in the broader context of child and adolescent health and development, particularly among children growing up in highly disadvantaged circumstances and who are at risk for failing to meet their developmental potential. Her research is directed to designing, implementing and evaluating interventions, strategies, and practices intended to mitigate the effects of exposure to early adversity on children’s development, with a particular focus on children and families in the majority world. She has focused on improving child development in the majority world, understanding the structures and capacities of various delivery systems to identify and scale effective interventions across a diversity of healthcare, caregiving, and education cultures, making improvements in child health and development, and thus in population health and health equity more broadly. She works closely with UN agencies, foundations and networks to support child development. Learn more about her here.

Amer Hasan

Amer Hasan is a Senior Economist with the Education Global Practice of the World Bank. He serves as the Bank’s focal point on Early Childhood Development. He has focused on a variety of lending operations and analytical tasks covering South Asia, East Asia and the Latin America and the Caribbean regions. His research covers a number of areas including: (i) evaluating the impact of ECD and schooling interventions; (ii) assessing the availability and quality of ECD services, and (iii) monitoring and planning resilient school infrastructure. Amer holds PhD and Master of Public Policy degrees from the University of Chicago as well as a BA from Yale University. Learn more about him here.

Catherine Draper

Catherine is an Associate Professor in the SAMRC Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She has backgrounds in psychology, public health, and qualitative research. Her research interests include the development and evaluation of community-based interventions, and she is particularly interested in early childhood health and development. She is currently leading studies on early learning, social emotional development and mental health in young children in vulnerable settings in South Africa. She also leads the implementation science components of the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative South Africa Bukhali trial. Learn more about her here.

Elizabeth Lule

Elizabeth Lule is the Executive Director of ECDAN. She is a widely recognized expert on international development and global health issues and has devoted her career to strengthening global commitments and programs addressing the needs of women, adolescents, children, and infants. Before joining ECDAN, she served in senior leadership, management, and technical positions at the World Bank for 17 years. She also worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as Director, at Pathfinder International as their Africa Regional Vice President, and as Technical Advisor with USAID in Nigeria. She started her career in academia and served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Global Health. Elizabeth serves on several Boards of Directors, including Save the Children International, the Africa Institute for Development Policy, and Concept Foundation.

Günther Fink

Günther is the Eckenstein-Geigy Professor of Epidemiology and Household Economics at the University of Basel, as well as the Head of the Household Economics and Health System Research Unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. He holds an MSc in International Economic Sciences, a MA in Applied Economics and a PhD in economics. Prior to joining the Swiss TPH and University of Basel, he researched and taught for 11 years at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His work focuses on developing and evaluating new and innovative approaches to improving health and development in low-resource settings and on measuring the long-term economic benefits of health improvements, particularly during the early childhood period. He is the principal investigator of ongoing cohort studies in Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Laos, Peru, Tanzania and Zambia, and collaborating with a range of global partners on intervention trials in Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Laos, Uganda and Zambia. Learn more about him here.

Dr. Gwang-Chol Chang

Gwang-Chol Chang Chief of Education Policy Section, UNESCO Mr Gwang-Chol Chang is currently the Chief of Education Policy Section at UNESCO Headquarters since June 2019. Before that, he worked as Senior Program Specialist, Chief of Education Section at the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar since February 2016 and coordinated all education programs of the Office. Prior to joining the Dakar Office, he was Senior Program Specialist at UNESCO. From 1996 to 2010, he served at various units of UNESCO’s Education Sector in Paris, supporting diverse programs, including policy analysis, planning, and management. Before 1996, he worked at the Ministry of Education of his country. He holds a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D) from Kim Hyong Jik University of Education, DPR Korea. Learn more about him here.

Milagros Nores

Milagros is the Co-Director for Research and Associate Research Professor at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). Her research focuses on early childhood evaluation, data-driven policy and programming, cost and benefits of early interventions, evaluation design, equity, and English language learners. Her background is in early childhood program evaluation, the economics of education, and international and comparative education. Currently, her work includes studying a high-quality early care and education program in Colombia, examining parental-child educational practices for minority children in the U.S., evaluating Seattle’s preschool program, the West Virginia preschool program, and the Early Care and Education system in Indiana, developing a child formative assessment for Trinidad and Tobago, and studying teacher’s play facilitation in Colombia, among others. She recently concluded her appointment to a special commission of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which studied the Opportunity Gap for Young Children from Birth to Eight in the United States. Learn more about her here.

Sabine Kleinert

Sabine Kleinert is Deputy Editor at The Lancet and Research Integrity and Risk Management Lead for The Lancet Group of journals. She is a member of the Leadership Team of The Lancet Group. She served as Vice-Chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics from 2006 to March 2012 and was involved in the Conferences on Research Integrity from their beginning in 2007. She is a member of the Governing Board of the World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation and was Co-Chair of the 3 rd (Montreal, Canada, 2013), 4 th (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2015) and 7 th World Conference on Research Integrity (Cape Town, South Africa, 2022). Her background is qualification as a medical doctor in Germany and training as a Paediatrician and Paediatric Cardiologist in the UK, Belgium, Australia, the USA, and Australia. Learn more about her here.

Shekufeh Zonji

Shekufeh Zonji is the Global Technical Lead at ECDAN, focusing on key knowledge, learning, and strategic partnerships. With over 15 years of global experience in early childhood development across education, child protection, and health, she has tackled challenges in Latin America, East Africa, and South Asia. In Bangladesh, Shekufeh designed ECD models for vulnerable communities, including urban slums and flood-prone areas. In Afghanistan, she led the Aga Khan Foundation’s ECD portfolio and contributed to national pre-primary policy development. She has consulted for organizations like BRAC and Save the Children on strategy, research, and intervention design. Shekufeh holds a background in biology and psychology with a focus on cognitive science and neuroscience, speaks eight languages, and collaborates on child-centered urban design projects. Learn more about her here.

Victor Aguayo

Victor is the Director of Child Nutrition and Development at UNICEF. He brings 30 years of policy, programme, management and humanitarian experience in maternal and child nutrition in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and globally. His work is guided by the belief that hunger and malnutrition are a violation of children’s rights. He is the lead author of UNICEF’s Conceptual Framework on Maternal and Child Nutrition, 2020 and UNICEF’s Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030.

Victor is a public health doctor. He graduated in Biological Sciences, earned an MPH in Global Health and a PhD in Public Health Nutrition at Sorbonne University in Paris, and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California. Fluent in English, French, and Spanish, he has published over 75 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Learn more about him here.