Ensuring the Healthy Development of Young Children

The earliest years have a big impact on healthy childhood development and outcomes later in life. Early childhood experiences literally shape the brain’s architecture, establishing either a sturdy or fragile base for all the learning, health and behavior that follows. A strong foundation in these early years improves the odds for positive outcomes, and a weak foundation increases the likelihood of problems later in life. When we invest in systems that ensure all children and their families are healthy, learning and thriving, we are making an investment in New Hampshire’s future. Unfortunately, New Hampshire lags behind much of the nation in public support for systems that serve young children and their families. To address this missed opportunity, our community partners work to raise awareness about the importance of investing in early childhood, solidify support for shared goals, promote use of data to make decisions, adopt quality programs and services, and advance financing and policy changes that make it easier for young children to thrive.

Our Strategic Grants are identified in partnership with key stakeholders. Interested applicants should contact Kim Firth for more information.

How are New Hampshire's Children and Their Families?

If we want to assess how NH's children and their families are doing, and identify solutions to ensure all children thrive, we must look at the environment context in which children live and grow. 

Each of these contexts is represented in the image below. Click on the graphic below to begin exploring this interactive data “hub” and select a topic in the graphic (e.g., health). This will bring you all the indicators for that category (e.g., health insurance status, access to primary care, etc.). Selecting any of those indicators will bring you to an interactive display with up-to-date, downloadable regional and state level data.