Early developmental barriers and opportunities

LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.

The role of the private sector in inclusive development. Barriers and opportunities at the base of the pyramid.

PNUD

Lugar: Estambul; Año: 2014; p. 19 - 40

Establishing an intersectoral agenda focused on fostering the development of children living in poverty, implies the need to start from a wide conceptualization that consider an approach to multiple dimensions and mechanisms within a systemic, comprehensive, and coherent way involving ecological and transactional perspectives1. In such a framework the public and the private sectors are part of the developmental contexts which every community build in terms of cultural and material resources. In this sense, the public and the private sectors are active agents of the modulation of different aspects of childhood development because their actions influence any developmental context. The gradual, agreed by consensus, construction of a common language dealing with child development and its determinants in ecological terms (i.e., biological, social and cultural) would be a first, necessary step toward the construction of networks apt at informing about both the design, and implementation of comprehensive, coherent actions. Specifically, the neuroscientific study of childhood poverty is an area that has recently emerged in the academic and public contexts2-5. Taking in consideration the current neuroscientific approaches, the agenda of the study of how different environmental conditions influence brain organization and reorganization during development, include a diversity of approaches which include: neural plasticity ?what involves the issues on critical and sensitive periods, epigenetics, influence of environmental toxins, nutrition, stress regulation, and poverty modulation of selfregulation throughout the lifespan. In addition, intervention efforts aimed at generating changes in neurocognitive development have been implemented in the context of the study of literacy, arithmetic and cognitive control competences in different populations of children with typical and atypical developmental trajectories. The intrinsically innovative aspect of the neuroscientific agenda is that it allows the beginning of these explorations in terms of basic mental operations considering different levels of analysis (i.e., molecular, systemic, neural activation, individual and social behavior). In such a context, ecological considerations about how poverty shapes child neurocognitive development and its biological and cultural determinants should consider: (a) the identification of different risk factors and mediation mechanisms; (b) the design of intersectoral and integrated actions (i.e., interventions, policy); (c) the establishment of intervention and financial priorities for NGO´s and philanthropic foundations supporting basic and applied research on neurocognitive development; and (d) the establishing of programs for professional building capacity focusing on child development as a complex phenomenon, aimed at avoiding myths, prejudices, conceptual dogmatism and misconceptions.