Investing in young children is a moral, economic and social imperative.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have set the targets, and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health and other related organizations provide the roadmap towards their attainment of these goals. What we now need is political will and investments—by governments, development partners, academia, civil society and all who are concerned with the health and well-being of children, communities and societies. Early childhood development will not only benefit children of today but will have a direct impact on the stability and prosperity of nations in the future.
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is pleased to support The Lancet’s 2016 Early Childhood Development Series. The series highlights the importance of early childhood development at a time when it has been universally endorsed in the SDGs. This series considers new scientific evidence for interventions, building on the findings and recommendations of previous Lancet Series on child development from 2007 and 2011, and proposes pathways for implementation of early childhood development at scale. The series emphasizes “nurturing care”, especially of children below three years of age and multi-sectoral interventions starting with health, which can have wide reach to families and young children through health and nutrition.