The Economic Benefits of High-Quality Early Childhood Programs: What Makes the Difference? - Executive Summary

Executive summary of "The Economic Benefits of High-Quality Early Childhood Programs: What Makes the Difference?" report. Includes findings and recommendations in brief

The New Male Mystique

Examines the rise in men reporting work-family conflict, factors that put men at risk for conflict, and those that help reduce it, including supervisor support and workplace flexibility. Makes recommendations for workplace policies and public dialogue

Preschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society - Executive Summary

Executive summary of "reschool for All: Investing in a Productive and Just Society" report. Includes findings and recommendations in brief

Autonomy-supportive parenting and associations with child and parent executive function

Autonomy-supportive parenting appears to play an important role in children's executive function (EF) development. However, few studies have accounted for parents' EF skills when examining the link between parenting and child EF in families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. In the current study, parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 85 dyads) were assessed in the fall of preschool on well-validated behavioral assessments of EF and participated in a dyadic problem-solving task. We found that parent EF and child EF were correlated, both were associated with autonomy-supportive parenting, and these links were not moderated by socioeconomic status. Autonomy support was a predictor of child EF skills above and beyond parent EF, and boot-strapping mediational analyses confirmed that autonomy-supportive behaviors mediated the link between parent-child EF. These results provide initial evidence for the intergenerational transmission of EF through autonomy support

The transition to parenthood in obstetrics: Enhancing prenatal care for 2-generation impact

Obstetrics, the specialty overseeing infant and parent health before birth, could be expanded to address the interrelated areas of parents\u27 prenatal impact on children\u27s brain development and their own psychosocial needs during a time of immense change and neuroplasticity. Obstetrics is primed for the shift that is happening in pediatrics, which is moving from its traditional focus on physical health to a coordinated, whole-child, 2- or multigeneration approach. Pediatric care now includes developmental screening, parenting education, parent coaching, access to developmental specialists, brain-building caregiving skills, linkages to community resources, and tiered interventions with psychologists. Drawing on decades of developmental origins of health and disease research highlighting the prenatal beginnings of future health and new studies on the transition to parenthood describing adult development from pregnancy to early postpartum, we have proposed that, similar to pediatrics, the integration of education and intervention strategies into the prenatal care ecosystem should be tested for its potential to improve child cognitive and social-emotional development and parental mental health. Pediatric care programs can serve as models of change for the systematic development, testing and, incorporation of new content into prenatal care as universal, first-tier treatment and evidenced-based, triaged interventions according to the level of need. To promote optimal beginnings for the whole family, we have proposed an augmented prenatal care ecosystem that aligns with, and could build on, current major efforts to enhance perinatal care individualization through consideration of medical, social, and structural determinants of health

Selective Akt Inhibitors Synergize with Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors and Effectively Override Stroma-Associated Cytoprotection of Mutant FLT3-Positive AML Cells

Objectives: Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-treated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients commonly show rapid and significant peripheral blood blast cell reduction, however a marginal decrease in bone marrow blasts. This suggests a protective environment and highlights the demand for a better understanding of stromal:leukemia cell communication. As a strategy to improve clinical efficacy, we searched for novel agents capable of potentiating the stroma-diminished effects of TKI treatment of mutant FLT3-expressing cells. Methods: We designed a combinatorial high throughput drug screen using well-characterized kinase inhibitor-focused libraries to identify novel kinase inhibitors capable of overriding stromal-mediated resistance to TKIs, such as PKC412 and AC220. Standard liquid culture proliferation assays, cell cycle and apoptosis analysis, and immunoblotting were carried out with cell lines or primary AML to validate putative candidates from the screen and characterize the mechanism(s) underlying observed synergy. Results and Conclusions Our study led to the observation of synergy between selective Akt inhibitors and FLT3 inhibitors against mutant FLT3-positive AML in either the absence or presence of stroma. Our findings are consistent with evidence that Akt activation is characteristic of mutant FLT3-transformed cells, as well as observed residual Akt activity following FLT3 inhibitor treatment. In conclusion, our study highlights the potential importance of Akt as a signaling factor in leukemia survival, and supports the use of the co-culture chemical screen to identify agents able to potentiate TKI anti-leukemia activity in a cytoprotective microenvironment

The economic benefits of high-quality early childhood programs: What makes the difference

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Changing Families, Changing Work

[Excerpt] In September 1963, Leave It To Beaver aired for the last time. Yet, the archetype of family life that this show idealized—the employed father and stay-at-home mother within the nuclear family—was so engrained in the collective unconscious that American Women: The Report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (hereafter American Women), delivered to President Kennedy in 1963, made almost no mention of it. It was just assumed that this was normal. Fifty years later perhaps the most profound change in American society is the change in family structures. In 1963, roughly two thirds of U.S. households were like the Cleavers in Leave It to Beaver. Today, married couples with children represent only about 20% of U.S. households. The other 80% of households reflect a myriad of families—from single parents to same sex couples to dual-income couples, some of whom are married and some of whom are not. This paper focuses on the changes on the home front and how they have interacted with changes on the work front to create a new set of challenges and opportunities for ensuring that women and men can reach their full potential.Changing_Families__Changing_Work.pdf: 189 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Changing Families, Changing Work

This study looks at the changing roles of women in the family and at work