The early childhood brain development story has been a powerful influence on the growth of investments in programs to promote early learning and enhance school readiness. But the brain does not exist by itself. Connecting the brain to the rest of the body is critically important. Early childhood experiences are as much about lifelong physical and mental health as they are about early learning and readiness to succeed in school. All biological systems, all of them are highly interconnected, and all of these systems are primed to adapt to whatever the environment would throw at us.
Think about this. As a team of highly skilled athletes, each has a role to play, but they depend upon each other. They influence each other's responses like any... Good team. It's how they operate together that is the key to their success.
When we are stressed, every cell in the body is working overtime. The brain is the master control system that detects threat and then manages the response of all of the different systems. It sends signals to the cardiovascular system to increase heart rate and blood pressure.
Signals are picked up by metabolic systems to increase the availability of blood sugar. to provide more energy stores for the body. The immune system is activated to be on alert for the possibility of a wound or the need to protect against infection. The neuroendocrine system is activated to increase levels of stress hormones in the bloodstream. All of these also provide feedback to the brain.
The stress response system was designed to deal with an acute threat or challenge. But when the stress continues at a very high level, then these biological responses, actually start to have a wear and tear effect on the body. This is where stress explains chronic disease. The science is really clear.
The most costly chronic diseases in our society have their roots in early childhood. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression, three of many diseases that are associated with greater adversity early in life. Those three diseases together consume more than $600 billion. of health care costs a year.
So if we want to think about preventing disease and promoting health, it doesn't begin with exercising more and eating better when you're 30 or 40 years old. Health promotion and preventing disease begins prenatally and it extends into the early childhood period. Connecting the brain to the rest of the body has very important implications for early childhood policy. If we look at the basic science-based principles focused on early learning, strengthening, relationships, building skills, reducing sources of stress. Those are the same principles that increase the likelihood for lifelong physical and mental health.
And when we think about the major sources of adversity early in life, we talk about poverty, discrimination, exposure to violence, maltreatment, child abuse, and neglect. Although each of these sources of adversity differ from each other, biologically, the effect on the body is the same. Systemic racism, the dangers of implicit bias, and everyday discrimination impose a level of stress and adversity on families of color raising children that is present all the time. It's never too late to make things better, and we are biologically prepared to adapt to whatever environment we live in. But we need to look upstream at more systemic issues that are the sources of this enormous burden of threat.
and hardship. We have to connect policies, resource allocations from the educational sector and the health sector and the human services sector. Pediatric primary care is the one domain where almost all children are seen from birth on and provides a critical opportunity for engagement with families and developing relationships.
promoting healthy development and is the ideal frontline opportunity to connect families to needed services as early as possible when they can be most effective. Pediatrics alone is not going to provide all of the supports that many families need. The opportunity is to move away from asking how do we connect pediatric primary care to early childhood programs and in a different way change our mindset to say how do we build.
A new early childhood ecosystem in which pediatrics is an integrated part. The brain development story has been a powerful influence. The same principles, the same concepts are also affecting the early foundations of physical and mental health that will last for a lifetime.