Starting Early

👋 Welcome to Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, and engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.

As we shared in our recent conversation with Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and Dave Ellis, traumatic events such as experiencing parental separation, violence, abuse or neglect, and toxic relationships during childhood can create invisible scars, often damaging mental health well into adulthood. Dr. Burke Harris, California’s first surgeon general, has an audacious goal: to cut adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress in half within one generation.

We share Dr.

Welcome to Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, and engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.

The time of our lives that we remember the least — birth to age 5 — has the most profound impact on the rest of our lives. But our society has neglected for too long the education and care needs of infants, toddlers, and their families. 

As Dr. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, put it: “About half of the achievement gap we worry about at the end of high school is there before children walk through the kindergarten door.”

👋 Welcome to Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.

In our last issue, we connected ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and toxic stress as root causes of some of the most harmful and expensive societal and health challenges.   

This week, we highlight early relational health, an antidote to the damaging effects of trauma: buffering adversity through positive, nurturing relationships can advance a young child’s health, well-being, and resilience.

We spoke with a thoughtful early childhood expert and Turrell Fund trustee Dr.

👋Welcome to the third edition of Starting Early. Every other week, we spotlight new reports, useful news, engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.

• We work “upstream” on maternal and infant health and early childhood development — tackling root causes to prevent issuesfrom becoming problems; stopping problems before they become crises.

This week we discuss Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), a term that is relatively new to our mainstream vocabulary and is having a powerful impact on public health discussions and policymaking.

The basic idea is that early trauma and adversity that young children experience can lead to long-term health problems.

This week, we highlight World Maternal Mental Health Day, drawing attention to the essential mental health concerns women face. The COVID-19  pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on women — with working moms bearing the brunt of home-schooling and childcare, leading to over 2 million women leaving the workforce.

Looking ahead to Mother’s Day on Sunday 🌷, we believe it is vital to lift the work of women and honor the work of mothers. We recognize that when we invest in women and girls, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.

Please read on and we invite you to click through the links to go deeper.

You received this inaugural edition of the Burke Foundation’s newsletter, Starting Early, because of your interest in helping all children get the strong start they need to reach their full potential in life.

Like you, we work “upstream” on maternal and infant health and early childhood development — tackling root causes to prevent issues from becoming problems; stopping problems before they become crises.

Every other week, we’ll provide highlights of new reports, useful news, engaging interviews with people doing important work in the field, and interesting takes on issues that matter.

Our promise to you: We’ll keep Starting Early lively and short – with plenty of links so you explore what you want, when you want.