Contents

Podcast

Panelists

Additional Resources

Transcript

Additional Resources

• Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health


• Heat: An Action Guide for Policy


• Webinar Recording: Extreme Heat and Early Childhood Development


• Place Matters: The Environment We Create Shapes the Foundations of Healthy Development


• Place Matters: What Surrounds Us Shapes Us

Transcript

Cameron Seymour-Hawkins: Welcome to The Brain Architects, a podcast from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. I’m Cameron Seymour-Hawkins, the Center’s Communications Coordinator. Our Center believes that advances in the science of child development provide a powerful source of new ideas that can improve outcomes for children and their caregivers. By sharing the latest science from the field, we hope to help you make that science actionable and apply it in your work in ways that can increase your impact.  

In April, we hosted a webinar where we explored the science from our latest working paper, Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health. 

The Center’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Lindsey Burghardt, joined by Dr. Kari Nadeau, Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, brought the latest research and insights from the field to discuss the intersection of heat, early childhood development, and health equity. They also discussed actionable solutions to benefit children, caregivers, and communities now and in the future. 

We’re excited to share this conversation on today’s episode of the Brain Architects.  

Now, without further ado, here’s Rebecca Hansen, the Center’s Director of Communications, who will set the stage for our conversation.  

Rebecca Hansen: Hello, everyone, and welcome. We’re very happy to have you all with us for today’s webinar, Extreme Heat and Early Childhood Development: A discussion on rising temperatures and strategies for supporting development and lifelong health. Whether you’re joining us for the first time or have been a regular at our webinars here at the Center on the Developing Child, we are very happy to have you with us today. 

So, today’s webinar is grounded in the first working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment. The council is a multidisciplinary group that synthesizes and communicates about emerging science that can help to improve our understanding of how influences from the broader environment affect early childhood development and also lifelong health. The council’s first working paper, published earlier this year, focuses on the many ways that heat can affect development, including its impact on young children’s biological systems and how it can amplify the effects of systemic inequities. 

The paper offers strategies to mitigate the impact of extreme temperatures and points toward actionable solutions for cooling the communities where children live, grow, learn, and play. And we look forward to diving into these strategies throughout today’s conversation.  

So, without further ado, I am going to introduce our panel, starting with a note that while we had hoped to be joined today by Dr. Gaurab Basu, he was unfortunately unable to be here. We do have with us Dr. Lindsey Burghardt, who is Chief Science Officer at the Center on the Developing Child, where she develops and leads the center scientific agenda. She is also founding director of the Early Childhood Scientific Council for Equity and the Environment and leads their efforts to synthesize and communicate about the scientific mechanisms related to how children’s environments shape their development. Dr. Burghardt engages regularly with diverse stakeholders and audiences, with the aim of making the science both accessible and actionable. She is also a practicing primary care pediatrician in the community outside of Boston. 

Dr. Burghardt is joined today by Dr. Kari Nadeau, who is chair of the Department of Environmental Health, and John Rock, professor of climate and population