Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

This week I reviewed the following website: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/.

 I attempted to reach out to my initial contacts and have still not heard anything back from them.  I found the information on this site to be very informative.

Using the research from from their work in the United States, the Global Children’s Initiative seeks to advance the Center's core mission globally by implementing a compelling research, public engagement and leadership development agenda in child health and development that is grounded in science and engages researchers, public leaders, practitioners, and students from a wide range of institutions around the world. Specifically, the global program will focus on three strategic areas:

•  reframing the discourse around child health and development in the global policy arena by educating high-level decision-makers about the underlying science of learning, behavior, and health, beginning in the earliest years of life;

•  supporting innovative, multi-disciplinary research and demonstration projects to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track; and

•  building leadership capacity in child development research and policy—focused on both individuals and institutions—in low- and middle-income countries to increase the number and influence of diverse voices and perspectives that are contributing to the growing global movement on behalf of young children.

There is a support for the innovative, multi-disciplinary research and demonstration projects to explain global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed and how to get it back on track.  Guided by these strategic objectives, the Global Children’s Initiative has begun to build a portfolio of activities in three domains:

•  early childhood development;

•  child mental health; and

•  children in crisis and conflict situations.

The three insights I gained from my exploration were taken from the Child's mental Health section.  The topic of mental heath is an issue that is under-addressed and could have implications for broader health and development of children and societies.  On the website they talk about three initial projects they have selected to launch this effort in focusing on child's mental health:

1.) Assessing the state of child mental health services in Shanghai, China

2.) Developing and evaluating family-based strategies to prevent mental health problems in children affected by HIV\AIDS in Rwanda

3.) Addressing child maltreatment and mental health outcomes in three Caribbean nations (Barbados, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname)

To help strengthen their policy relevance these projects are designed to include economic components to analyze allocation effects in the supply and demand for services.