About Our Center

We’re uncovering the science of early childhood relationships to transform child development, family health, and strengths-based pediatric practice. 

The Center for Early Relational Health leads the nation’s most comprehensive research on early relationships, to pioneer scientific understanding of the mechanisms of early relational health (ERH) and its impacts on child development and outcomes. 

Far from “mushy” science, we conduct rigorous multimodal, computational, interdisciplinary research to interconnect large, longitudinal data sets. Understanding that early relationships influence the emergence of a healthy child, the center is dedicated to translating this hard science into innovations in primary prevention best practices. 

By transforming universal pediatric care through research, education, and practice — we can make evidence-based, real-world change at a population level.

American families face public health crises 

In 2021, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) called for a field-wide paradigm shift toward parent/caregiver-child relational health, promoting safe, stable, nurturing relationships as “biological necessities for all children.” Yet the U.S. simultaneously faces a youth mental health crisis and a population-wide epidemic of loneliness. 

Early Relational Health (ERH) offers solutions, but we need interventions for clinical care 

We know that positive interactions with parents/caregivers powerfully impact children’s (and therefore, families') lifelong well-being. Yet the Center for ERH’s 2022 fieldwide meta-analysis of relational interventions to improve health and development outcomes revealed something shocking: not a single dyadic ERH intervention is ready for implementation into pediatric clinical care. 

This finding helped crucially narrow the spotlight for the field of ERH: to develop relational interventions, we need relational evidence. The field of pediatrics is uniquely poised to work together with families to promote early relationships, with enormous potential for improving population-wide health outcomes. But to meet that potential, we need concrete ERH science. That’s why the center is building the evidence base for the field of ERH. 

A crucial need to understand the mechanisms of early relationships 

While we can be confident that connection is both protective and healing, the scientific mechanism of what actually happens between two individuals in relationship remains almost entirely unknown. Understanding and harnessing the early, innate power of relationships will allow us to develop and equip pediatricians with the interventions needed to move into an era of universal strengths-based pediatric practice. 

The Center for ERH will accomplish this mission through 4 strategic pillars:

1. The Scientific Strategy focuses on creating foundational knowledge of ERH (and its implications for life-course health, well-being, and socioemotional functioning) to build the evidence base for future clinical best practices that embed ERH into universal pediatric care. 
2. The Educational Strategy both trains the next generation of leaders in pediatric research and practice, and educates the public on important research findings. 
3. The Direct-to-Family Strategy actively connects with families to support them in tangible ways outside of our research mission. 
4. The Field-Building Strategy focuses on partnering with organizations and collaborators across and beyond Columbia to galvanize actionable change, based on evidence, toward stronger ERH nationwide.