Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that children who receive quality educational enrichment very early in their lives may have better health decades later.
The Abecedarian Project studied the potential benefits of early childhood education for underprivileged kids. The project, which began in the 1970s, followed underprivileged children from pre-kindergarten age into their 30s to trace the effects of an early childhood enrichment program. Recent findings of the project indicated that children who received educational interventions from infancy to the age of five were not only more likely to succeed in school, but were also more likely to have better health in their 30s—as suggested by their lower blood pressure and risk for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
The randomized controlled trials and the study’s long-running design are strengths that point to its high validity, said Elizabeth Pungello, a principal investigator of the project.
“Kids literally were selected off the streets,” Pungello said. “The fact that it’s longitudinal and that it’s a randomized design really gives us more confidence in the results.”
Pungello noted that the children were followed for 35 years, which strengthens the conclusions made in the paper.
She said she considers stress to be one of the potential factors in these results.
“When you’re living [with long-term] stress, you’re constantly activating a biological response, and it has a wear and tear on the system,” Pungello said. “Our hypothesis is that by providing the education, they have a high-quality, certified, stable place all year long, [and] that experience helps combat the chronic stress.”
Frequent relocation may be another factor influencing the results of the study, said Francis Campbell, a principal investigator of the study. Children who received the higher-quality education were able to attend the same childcare center with most of the same instructors for many years, whereas other children living in poverty might have had to move around to multiple childcare centers, missing out on the benefits of the first group’s more stable environment.
Other explanations include a better diet for the children receiving the intervention—they were provided with two meals and a snack—and regular structured active playtime, Campbell said.
The findings are very interesting and have a lot of merit, but they should not be overblown, said Kenneth Dodge, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy.
“This study is one of our country’s best early childhood intervention studies ever, and that is positive,” Dodge said in an interview. “[But] the effects are modest, and it’s not exactly clear that the program has actually prevented disease or death or lowered healthcare dollars.”
Dodge also noted that the intervention program was actually implemented 40 years ago, and it is unclear whether such an intervention today would have similar effects. He added that for such a program to really be important, it would have to be implemented with full populations. A project on a much larger scale, however, would present greater challenge, he said.
But Campbell, Pungello and Dodge all noted that the study’s findings indicate a greater need for early educational intervention for very young, at-risk children.
“If parents have to work, make sure quality childcare is available, and subsidize that if necessary,” Campbell said.
The results of this study are already being applied locally. Dodge said North Carolina runs two programs targeting early childhood education—Smart Start and N.C. Pre-K—both of which are implemented in Durham. Smart Start provides services from birth to age five, and N.C. Pre-K provides an opportunity for disadvantaged four-year-old children to attend a high quality pre-kindergarten program.
“Both programs are effective at improving elementary school outcomes, and the combination is even better,” Dodge wrote in an email Saturday. “[They are] two of the best programs being implemented at scale anywhere.”
Dodge noted that although the two programs have been implemented throughout North Carolina successfully, their funding has been somewhat jeopardized by cuts. He added that sustainability and maintenance of high quality are both challenges of installing these programs on a larger scale.
Pungello said her next goal is to understand why the study produced the results it did.
“If we are designing an early educational intervention program now, we can be more targeted to make sure that we maximize its impact,” Pungello said.
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