PRESENTATIONS & VIDEOS

Simple stats and sad stories: Early child survival and development in Canada

Professor Clyde Hertzman, Professor at UBC's School of Population and Public Health, Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership, College for Interdisciplinary Studies and Canada Research Chair in Population Health and Human Development.

Nearly 30% of BC children start school vulnerable, (that is, behind where we would like them to be) in their physical, social, emotional, or language/cognitive development. Vulnerability then goes on to adversely influence school success and life chances. At least 2/3 of this vulnerability is 'avoidable', in the sense that improved early childhood experiences would have prevented it. Over the last decade, monitoring has not shown any sustained progress in reducing vulnerability by the time children reach school age, despite the fact that early child development has been on the public agenda. A close look at Canadian data shows that, similarly, there has been no progress in reducing infant mortality since the mid-1990's, too. In other words, Canada is not making progress in EITHER child survival or development. This presentation will explore the reasons for these disappointing trends.

This public talk, presented by UBC's School of Population and Public Health, was given on February 10th, 2011.