What’s New

Center Researchers to Present at the 58th Annual Meeting of ISDP

November 6, 2025: Three members of the Center will be presenting at the 58th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP), taking place November 12–14, 2025, in San Diego, California:  

• Andréane Lavallée: Body Maps of Maternal Inner-Body Sensations Associated with Low to High Mother-Child Face-to-Face Emotional Synchrony (poster presentation)  

• Jill Owen: Buffering Effect of Early Relational Health in Infancy on Emerging Psychopathology in Toddlerhood (poster presentation)  

• Nicole Shearman: The Virtual Strange Situation: Assessing Infant-Caregiver Attachment in Naturalistic Settings (poster presentation)  

Reach Out and Read and Nurture Connection 2025 National Summit  

November 3, 2025: This week, Nov. 5–6, 2025, Dani Dumitriu will be attending the Reach Out and Read and Nurture Connection 2025 National Summit: Strengthening Connections Among Health Care, Families, and Communities to Improve Support for Positive Early Relationships in Washington, D.C.

From the organizers: “In November 2025, Nurture Connection, Reach Out and Read, and the American Academy of Pediatrics will boldly convene a diverse cohort of communities and partners in Washington, D.C. to establish the start of an ongoing learning coalition across national and local networks. Elevating community and parent voice, together with leaders from health care partners and other early childhood systems, we will host facilitated conversations on strengthening connections among families, health care, and communities to support positive early relationships and Early Relational Health.”

What Makes a Relationship: Building the Taxonomy of Early Relational Health

October 31, 2025: Scientific breakthroughs are powerful, but they don’t change outcomes until they’re actionable. That’s why the Center for Early Relational Health brings together over 200 multidisciplinary doctors and scientists to lead the field’s first comprehensive research on every aspect of early childhood relationships—and, crucially, to put that science directly into the hands of pediatricians and the families they care for. 

Five years into our groundbreaking COMBO initiative, we’re excited to preview our preliminary findings on what makes a healthy relationship, what this means for families, and what’s on the horizon to turn evidence into action.

Columbia’s Irving Institute Honors MaCRO with the Inaugural Team Science Award of Distinction for Clinical and Translational Research

October 30, 2025: Facing this century’s most urgent global health crisis, a pioneering group of clinicians at Columbia University came together to enable fast, efficient, accurate maternal-child research by innovating an unprecedented team science model under the MaCRO (Maternal Child Research Operations) Consortium — where COMBO itself was incubated. 

Now, 5 years later, those innovations have led to findings and collaborations that go well beyond the pandemic.

For this groundbreaking model, Columbia honored MaCRO in July 2024 with the inaugural Team Science Award of Distinction for Clinical and Translational Research, after 4 years of what they called “exemplary work across three departments [that] has made a significant impact on our understanding of maternal and child health… advancing science and improving lives.” 

Just Released: NASEM Consensus Report on Early Relational Health

October 27, 2025: Dani Dumitriu, Funding Director of the Center for Early Relational Health, recently had the honor of serving on the committee for a landmark NASEM Consensus Report on Early Relational Health, which released this month. 

Among many important concepts, the report establishes: 

• A strong stance that relationships aren’t just a “nice-to-have” — they’re a biological need
• The concept of a sensitive early life period for developing relational capacity, in the 0-3 years
• An overview of research needed in order to promote long-term child and family physical and socioemotional outcomes, including the first ever published recognition that Early Relational Health is comprised of a multitude of constructs, and the need to understand how these constructs individually and synergistically map onto life-course outcomes

“It was a privilege to dig into this content with ERH luminaries like Andrew Garner and David Willis, NASEM's incredibly talented Emily P. Backes, our center’s own Andréane Lavallée, and many more field-leading academics.” — Dani Dumitriu, Director, Center for Early Relational Health.

We hope this consensus report can be a useful resource on the road to making a difference for children and families across the country. Click below to read the full report here on the NASEM website. 

Partnering with Parents on Research that Makes a Difference for Families

October 20, 2025: To truly support families, we need to understand early relationships from all angles—and that crucially includes listening deeply to families themselves. Click here to learn about the Center for Early Relational Health’s exciting partnerships to embed parent voice into the very foundations of ERH research, bringing this important science directly into the communities we seek to serve.

Announcing COMBO National: Transforming the Way We Approach Nationwide Family Health & Well-Being

October 6, 2025: By attaching real-time relational research to an unprecedented social disruption, COMBO opened the door to a once-in-a-generation opportunity: a truly comprehensive look at the science of early relationships. In exclusive partnership with Reach Out and Read, the “COMBO National” pilot is expanding across the country to build the evidence base for the growing field of Early Relational Health.

Putting Families First

June 16, 2025: Positive interactions between children and their parents/caregivers are crucial to lifelong development and health outcomes. Yet a recent fieldwide meta-analysis showed a surprising lack of data to support implementation of dyadic ERH interventions in pediatric clinical care, to promote better outcomes. These findings helped crucially narrow the spotlight for the field of early relational health (ERH): to develop relational interventions, we need relational evidence. COMBO’s national expansion is a groundbreaking partnership to uncover the science of Early Relational Health, toward universal interventions for clinicians and families.

Our Newsletter for Families Is Here!

May 29, 2025: Want to see 10 of our most important findings so far?  In this first edition of our COMBO family newsletter (descarga el PDF en español), you’ll find key takeaways for parents and young children, including:

March 1st, 2025: March 1st is Baby Sleep Day! In honor of this annual event, we want to share what we’ve learned at COMBO about the importance of sleep — not just for babies, but for their families too. A child’s development depends on a multitude of factors, and sleep is a big one. We know that from the day a baby is born (and even toward the end of pregnancy), sleep is crucial for their physical and mental health — including growing, thinking, learning, and eventually speaking. “A baby’s brain goes through an enormous expansion in the first two years of life,” says Dr. Dani Dumitriu, a pediatrician, newborn hospitalist, neuroscientist, and the lead scientist of the COMBO Initiative. “And a ton of that growth happens during the first 6 months, when a baby’s brain doubles in size!”

Save the Date! 4th Annual COMBO Playdate 2025

April 15th, 2025: Join us May 3rd, 2–4:30 — Come kick off summer with a joyous afternoon of fun, free, bilingual offerings for the whole family: exciting activities designed to support children's development, and resources & experiences that really matter to parents and caregivers. This year has a special discovery theme, bringing families together to explore the world around them through science, creativity, and connection. All families are welcome, and resources will be available in both English and Spanish!

• Step aboard the BioBus to explore microorganisms under high-powered microscopes
• Kids can climb into a real FDNY firetruck while parents get certified in CPR
• Discover the joys of reading together with LINK’s Literacy Program
• Look through a telescope with astronomy scientists to observe the skies
• Join a HYPE family dance class with your little ones (ages 0–4) for a fun and energetic bonding experience!
• PLUS: face painting, sensory play, potting your own plant, Brazilian drumline, music, calming wind-down exercises, and so much more!

Don't miss the exciting prizes and giveaways + helpful local resources! Come make memories together with your family, and connect with other families in the community. Click below to reserve your spot.

Highlights from the 2024 COMBO Research

April 1st, 2025: Want to see 10 of our most important findings so far? We’re thrilled to share the first edition of our COMBO family newsletter! 

You’ll find key takeaways for parents and young children, including:  

• How kids born since 2020 are developing 
• What helps pregnant & new moms with sleep and energy levels
• What to know if you had Covid during pregnancy 
• And how COMBO families helped reunite millions of moms and newborns

Plus a note from our lead scientist about the important discoveries ahead!