The first 1,000 days of a child’s life – pregnancy and the months leading to their second birthday – are a critical time. Expectant mothers need good antenatal care. The better their physical and mental health, the greater the likelihood of giving birth to a healthy baby and being able to nurture that baby through the first two years of life.
There’s a large global body of evidence to show that what happens during this period has lifelong effects on a person’s health, growth and well-being. Less attention has been paid to the “next 1,000 days”, when children are between the ages of 2 and 5. But what public health and child development experts do know is that this, too, is a crucial time.
Within this period, there are opportunities to build on investments made in the first 1,000 days, as well as to help put children who did not get the input they needed earlier in life back on track, setting them up for school and a healthy childhood and adolescence. The Lancet , one of the world’s leading medical journals, has just launched a series of papers about these “next 1,000 days”, building on previous series in 2007 , 2011 and 2016 on early childhood development. I am a public health specialist with expertise in early childhood development who led the series, working with experts from all over the world to highlight the latest scholarly evidence about this crucial window of time in children’s lives.
We’ve focused particularly on low- and middle-income countrie.
