WATCH: How the environment shapes the foundations of early development

Dolores Acevedo-Garcia speaks at an expert panel hosted by The Hunt Institute and inspired by Place Matters, a recent working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child 

In this webinar, Chief Science Officer for the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University Lindsey Burghardt, Environmental Health Scientist at the United States Environmental Protection Agency Caitlin Gould, and Acevedo-Garcia speak about how built and natural environments shape child development and lifelong health, and why exposure to risk and access to opportunity are distributed inequitably.

Acevedo-Garcia shares how understanding neighborhood opportunity and promoting policies that support healthy neighborhoods is strongly connected to advancing racial/ethnic equity. She explains that Black and Hispanic children often grow up in neighborhoods with fewer resources for healthy development because of decades of intentionally racist policies that created and entrenched residential segregation. She also describes how users of the Child Opportunity Index (COI) in the health, housing and early childhood fields are using the COI to target neighborhoods of high-need and distribute resources equitably.