What Shapes Us: Strong Foundations, Thriving Futures

The environments where children live, grow, play, and learn play a powerful role in shaping their development and lifelong health and well-being. In this episode, Tassy Warren, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Executive Director of the Center on the Developing Child, is joined by Faculty Director Stephanie Jones, PhD, and Chief Science Officer Lindsey Burghardt, MD, MPH, FAAP, to explore what we mean by the “developmental environment” and why they matter.

Drawing on research across early childhood development, health, and education, Drs. Jones and Burghardt discuss how our understanding of the influences on child development has expanded over the past 20 years to include not only a child’s foundational relationships—which remain essential—but also the broader social, environmental, and systemic conditions that surround young children and their caregivers. They explore how factors such as housing, economic security, climate, and more shape the health and well-being of young children, caregivers, and communities. The conversation also considers what this broader understanding means for how we support children and caregivers, and how practitioners, policymakers, and communities can work together to create environments that support healthy development and lifelong well-being.

Co-Executive Director of the Center on the Developing Child and podcast host Tassy Warren is joined by the Center’s Faculty Director, Dr. Stephanie Jones, and Dr. Junlei Li, Saul Zaentz Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, to explore the evolution of serve and return and what we’ve learned about the influence of relationships on early childhood development over the past 20 years.
Drs. Jones and Li will share how the concept has helped shift our understanding of the importance of early relationships and how that thinking has evolved into more recent concepts such as “early relational health.”
The conversation also looks beyond individual relationships to consider the broader ecosystem in which relationships develop—including the environments that shape caregivers’ ability to build strong, responsive relationships with young children—and how we can better support healthy relationships in policy and practice.

The Center on the Developing Child is excited to relaunch its podcast with a new name and a new season, exploring how understanding of early childhood development continues to evolve and what that means for children, caregivers, and the systems that shape their lives.
As the Center celebrates its 20th year, co-Executive Director and podcast host Tassy Warren sits down with co-Executive Director Gillian Najarian and new Faculty Director Stephanie Jones to reflect on how the field of early childhood development has evolved and the Center’s role in helping to shift the narrative around early childhood over the last two decades. Their conversation explores the Center’s beginnings, its role in connecting research to policy and practice, and its impact on the broader field. Gillian will share memories from the Center’s earliest days and the factors that have shaped the Center’s success, while Stephanie reflects on her long history with the Center, its impact on the field of early childhood development, the opportunities that lie ahead, and the ways the field has changed over the past 20 years.

The Center on the Developing Child is excited to relaunch its podcast with a new name and a new season, exploring how understanding of early childhood development continues to evolve and what that means for children, caregivers, and the systems that shape their lives.
As the Center celebrates its 20th year, co-Executive Director and podcast host Tassy Warren sits down with co-Executive Director Gillian Najarian and new Faculty Director Stephanie Jones to reflect on how the field of early childhood development has evolved and the Center’s role in helping to shift the narrative around early childhood over the last two decades. Their conversation explores the Center’s beginnings, its role in connecting research to policy and practice, and its impact on the broader field. Gillian will share memories from the Center’s earliest days and the factors that have shaped the Center’s success, while Stephanie reflects on her long history with the Center, its impact on the field of early childhood development, the opportunities that lie ahead, and the ways the field has changed over the past 20 years.

In this episode of the Brain Architects, we explore how stability across multiple domains shapes healthy development for young children and their caregivers.
Drawing on insights from the latest working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment, From Resources to Routines: The Importance of Stability in the Developmental Environment, this conversation examines how interconnected systems—including housing, employment, health care, education, and community supports—can help create, maintain, and restore stability.
The webinar highlights complementary frameworks, including the Urban Institute’s Web of Stabilizing Supports and EMPath's Economic Mobility Bridge, to explore how families experience stability across different aspects of daily life. Panelists share examples of how organizations, systems, and communities can work together to strengthen stability, support economic mobility, and promote healthy development for children and caregivers.