Leveraging science to inform social policy: How Ed Zigler created a movement.

Ed Zigler believed that developmental science should be applied to policy, programs, and practices to improve the lives of children and families. He shared this belief with others and paved the way for alternative career pathways. This paper describes how Ed influenced others to connect science with program development, evaluation, and policy, and created networks of applied scholars. Ed Zigler's influence is broad and spans beyond academia to influencer organizations. We weave our own professional experiences throughout the paper, which we organized around three lessons we learned from Ed: (a) explore alternative career pathways and build the field; (b) start with the science and think application; (c) apply the knowledge and influence policy.

Prioritizing research for integrated implementation of early childhood development and maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition platforms.

BACKGROUND: Existing health and nutrition services present potential platforms for scaling up delivery of early childhood development (ECD) interventions within sensitive windows across the life course, especially in the first 1000 days from conception to age 2 years. However, there is insufficient knowledge on how to optimize implementation for such strategies in an integrated manner. In light of this knowledge gap, we aimed to systematically identify a set of integrated implementation research priorities for health, nutrition and early child development within the 2015 to 2030 timeframe of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). METHODS: We applied the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative method, and consulted a diverse group of global health experts to develop and score 57 research questions against five criteria: answerability, effectiveness, deliverability, impact, and effect on equity. These questions were ranked using a research priority score, and the average expert agreement score was calculated for each question. FINDINGS: The research priority scores ranged from 61.01 to 93.52, with a median of 82.87. The average expert agreement scores ranged from 0.50 to 0.90, with a median of 0.75. The top-ranked research question were: i) "How can interventions and packages to reduce neonatal mortality be expanded to include ECD and stimulation interventions?"; ii) "How does the integration of ECD and MNCAH&N interventions affect human resource requirements and capacity development in resource-poor settings?"; and iii) "How can integrated interventions be tailored to vulnerable refugee and migrant populations to protect against poor ECD and MNCAH&N outcomes?". Most highly-ranked research priorities varied across the life course and highlighted key aspects of scaling up coverage of integrated interventions in resource-limited settings, including: workforce and capacity development, cost-effectiveness and strategies to reduce financial barriers, and quality assessment of programs. CONCLUSIONS: Investing in ECD is critical to achieving several of the SDGs, including SDG 2 on ending all forms of malnutrition, SDG 3 on ensuring health and well-being for all, and SDG 4 on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of life-long learning opportunities for all. The generated research agenda is expected to drive action and investment on priority approaches to integrating ECD interventions within existing health and nutrition services.

Citizenship attitudes and allegiances in diverse youth.

This study examined the relationships among three sets of variables in a sample of 299 diverse high school youth: (a) demographic variables such as ethnicity and immigrant status, (b) attitudes toward citizenship responsibilities, and (c) allegiances to three socializing institutions--family, school, and community. A measure of citizenship attitudes was found to identify two distinct constructs--Polity-Oriented and Civic-Oriented attitudes toward citizenship responsibilities, relating to the polity or nation-state, and to serving the community. European Americans were consistently lower on Polity-Oriented attitudes than Hispanic teens, and lower on family allegiance than other non-European American groups. Hispanic youth reported significantly lower community involvement than other non-European American groups as well as European American youth. Whereas the only significant correlation between allegiance and citizenship attitudes was between family allegiance and Polity-Oriented attitudes, there were multiple moderating effects of immigrant status and ethnicity. Results are discussed in terms of ethnicity and allegiances as contexts of socialization for the development of attitudes toward citizenship responsibilities.

Affluent adolescents, depression, and drug use: the role of adults in their lives.

The present study examined the association between adult supports to whom affluent youth turn when personally troubled or upset and their self-reported depression and drug use. The sample consisted of 374 affluent seventh graders. Perceived parental closeness played a mediating role in reducing depressive symptomology and drug use. Contrary to hypothesized predictions, other adult supports showed neither mediating nor moderating effect on adjustment. The data show that the presence of other adult supports in the context of low parental closeness actually exacerbates, not moderates, maladjustment. Since this finding is contradictory to the support literature with various populations, which shows the importance of social supports for psychological well-being, the particularity of this population and their potential challenges are highlighted.