The next 1000 days: building on early investments for the health and development of young children.

Following the first 1000 days of life that span from conception to two years of age, the next 1000 days of a child's life from 2-5 years of age offer a window of opportunity to promote nurturing and caring environments, establish healthy behaviours, and build on early gains to sustain or improve trajectories of healthy development. This Series paper, the first of a two-paper Series on early childhood development and the next 1000 days, focuses on the transition to the next 1000 days of the life course, describes why this developmental period matters, identifies the environments of care, risks, and protective factors that shape children's development, estimates the number of children who receive adequate nurturing care, and examines whether current interventions are meeting children's needs. Paper 2 focuses on the cost of inaction and the implications of not investing in the next 1000 days.

Protocol for validation of the Global Scales for Early Development (GSED) for children under 3 years of age in seven countries.

Introduction: Children's early development is affected by caregiving experiences, with lifelong health and well-being implications. Governments and civil societies need population-based measures to monitor children's early development and ensure that children receive the care needed to thrive. To this end, the WHO developed the Global Scales for Early Development (GSED) to measure children's early development up to 3 years of age.

School readiness among children born to women living with HIV in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: a cohort study protocol.

Introduction: Children who are born to women living with HIV are at a greater risk of suboptimal neurodevelopment; however, evidence from sub-Saharan Africa is limited and functional developmental outcomes are rarely assessed in this vulnerable population. The School Readiness among HIV-Exposed Children (SRHEC) cohort study aims to assess the school readiness of preschool aged children born to women living with HIV and to identify the biological, environmental and social factors that contribute to school readiness in this population.

Methods And Analysis: The SRHEC cohort is an observational follow-up study of children born to HIV-infected pregnant women who were previously enrolled in a maternal vitamin D supplementation randomised, placebo-controlled trial in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Estimates of a multidimensional index of nurturing care in the next 1000 days of life for children in low-income and middle-income countries: a modelling study.

Background: Nurturing care is crucial for children's ongoing development during the pre-primary education period, or the next 1000 days of life. We generated nationally representative prevalence estimates of access to ten basic indicators of nurturing care among children aged 3-4 years in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Methods: We applied multiple imputation and predictive modelling to data on children living in LMICs.

Measuring early childhood development: considerations and evidence regarding the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments.

Reflecting a burgeoning political interest in supporting young children around the world, global demand for reliable, valid, and scalable assessments of early childhood development (ECD) is on the rise. One of the more popular sets of tools for measuring the ECD of children under age 3 is the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI), which includes both a long form for research and evaluation and a short form for population-level monitoring. In this commentary, we describe the goals and limitations of the CREDI, research to support its use as a population-level ECD instrument, as well as the major gaps in its evidence base.