Thursday, 5/1/97 Interest in childhood development on the increase Clinical, scientific studies may contribute to new focus on education, childcare
By Kathryn Combs Daily Bruin Contributor Both the Clinton Administration and parents are taking an increasing interest in the development and education of America's children, with an eye on the preventative power of childcare policies. The baby-boom generation of parents is beginning to show increasing personal and political interest in child-related policy, sparked by new research findings. Director Rob Reiner's film "I Am Your Child" aired earlier this week, highlighting the importance of both biological and educational aspects of child development. In addition, the Clinton Administration has launched a campaign focusing on issues such as child care, brain development, learning and social development. Experts at UCLA involved in this movement say that the connection between clinical practice and scientific research is one of the factors causing this sudden interest. Dr. Jill Hoube, a fellow in the UCLA Clinical Scholars Program spoke of new findings in the area of childhood brain development. "(The welfare of children) is becoming more visible because a lot of the recent neuroscience research has become prominent," Hoube said. "A lot of what was understood in clinical research and developmental psychology research has become more understandable," Hoube continued. "People have a better understanding of what is going on in the brain." Dr. Harley Kornblum, an attending physician with the UCLA Children's Hospital, also cited an increase in brain development research as one of the reasons for this sudden interest in child development. "There's been a lot of interesting things happening in research about brain development," he said. "Brain development is a process of growing or establishing connections and pruning these connections," he said. "What happens is that some of these developmental processes take place during life," he added. Childhood is increasingly seen as a crucial phase in neural development, said Dr. Michael Regalado, an associate professor of pediatrics with the University of Southern California Medical School, who also works with UCLA researchers. "A child's experiences play an active role in how the brain itself is organized and develops,"Regalado said. "(Experience) affects all the interconnections that brain cells make with each other. It's part of the brain's hard wiring," he said. Dr. Edward McCabe, who is executive chair and professor in the department of pediatrics at UCLA further supported this. He cited a study published in 1994 that largely formed many of today's ideas about the topic of child development. "The Carnegie corporation in 1994 put out a report called Starting Points," McCabe said. "They argued that how a child functions in the preschool years and even into adulthood is dependent upon their experiences before age three," he said. Hoube backed this up, stressing the effect of environmental concerns on a child's development. "The things that we are seeing in the clinics are the things that we are afraid of seeing, like the effects of poverty, stress and diminishing resources," she said. One in two American children are classified as 'poor' according to government standards. Poverty is one factor increasingly impacting child health and welfare. "The extent of poverty that effects children is greater today than at any other time in our history," said Robert Valdez, formerly the deputy assistant secretary of health and director of Interagency Policy for the Clinton administration. "A great number of children are living in an environment that keeps them deprived of early stimulation," he added. "My involvement is, largely, trying to bring people together in L.A.and the local community." "One of the most frustrating things as a physician," Hoube said, "is that there's not a lot of community, public or private investment equipped to provide the kind of treatment necessary." "Childcare demands outweigh developmental issues," Hoube said. A focus of the Clinton-led campaign is the issue of how our children are raised and what education they receive. "By investing our energy and our dollars in the early childhood years, we might be able to prevent some of the problems that we have with older kids in our society," Hoube added, presenting the example of gangs and other peer related problems. "Topics such as prenatal care are vitally important for brain development and we need to take the long-term view," he concluded.