CPRC’s broad portfolio of research on children, youth, and families encompasses work on all phases of the life course, with overarching interests in family patterns/processes, inequalities and vulnerable groups, and the role of public policies. A particular strength of this group’s work is its developmental perspective, emphasizing how experiences at one phase of the life course set the stage for effects and transitions at subsequent stages and how outcomes of interest vary by developmental stage.
Leadership
I am an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development at Teachers College, Columbia University. I study educational policies designed to promote the cognitive and socio-emotional development of children from underserved communities. I worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at New York University, and I received my Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Irvine in 2017.
I am currently working on several large-scale, longitudinal, studies of early childhood development, including evaluations of the Chicago School Readiness Project, the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K program, and the Building Blocks preschool mathematics curriculum. Across my projects, I seek understand whether interventions designed to boost children’s early cognitive and behavioral skills will make long-lasting changes on developmental outcomes.
Natalie Hiromi Brito is an Associate Professor in the Psychology department at Columbia University and director of the Infant Studies of Learning and Neurocognitive Development (ISLAND) Lab. Her research examines how social and cultural environments influence brain and behavioral development in young children. Dr. Brito's research focuses on understanding how to better support caregivers and create conditions that promote healthy child development. Her lab studies how factors in the home environment— including caregiver mental health and the quality of parent-child interactions—affect the development of attention, memory, and social-emotional skills in infants and toddlers. Through this research, Dr. Brito aims to identify the environmental factors that best support early childhood development and inform evidence-based approaches to helping families thrive.
The goal of Dan Belsky's work is to reduce social inequalities in aging outcomes in the US and elsewhere. His research sits at the intersection of public health, population & behavioral science, and genomics. His studies seek to understand how genes and environments combine to shape health across the life course. Belsky's research uses tools from genome science and longitudinal data from population-based cohort studies. The aim is to identify targets for policy and clinical interventions to promote positive development from early life and extend healthspan. Belsky is a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Child Brain Development Network and from 2016-2018 was an Early Career Fellow of the Jacobs Foundation.