The Importance of Early Childhood Education on Health and Well-Being

The Urban Institute, in collaboration with Policies for Action (P4A), recently delivered an empowering research forum on P4A’s latest findings on early education’s lasting impacts on health and well-being from policymakers designing and implementing programs at the city and state levels.  This forum sparked a positive dialogue on the importance of health in early childhood investments and identified avenues for cross-disciplinary engagement and research around early childhood education and health.

The preschool years are a critically important time to provide special education services to children with developmental delays or disabilities. At this early age, children’s brains are going through their most important period of development, so this is the time when services can make the biggest impact.  New York City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program provides preschool special education services if a student shows a significant delay in any of the five areas of development: cognitive (thinking and learning); communication (understanding and using language); physical/motor (vision, hearing, and movement); social/emotional (getting along with other people); and adaptive/self-help (independent living skills, such as toileting, eating, and dressing). 

Notable scholar, Dr. Sherry Glied, Dean and professor of public service at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service discussed her current research, “Seeing and Hearing: The Impacts of New York’s City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program on the Health of Low-Income Children.”