TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health

At the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago, we use science to drive innovation and fuel social change to help parents and caregivers improve child outcomes.

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Innovate

We develop cutting-edge interventions, tools, and technology that help optimize foundational brain development, and can be used by individuals and scaled across the country.

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Collaborate

Our approach to preventing early cognitive disparities relies on collaboration. We are committed to building coalitions, sharing knowledge, and achieving victories across systems and communities.

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Disseminate

We produce research, publications, and events that generate support for a public health approach to empowering parents and promoting children’s foundational brain development.

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We share interventions and campaigns designed to help parents, caregivers, and communities promote children’s healthy development, putting resources directly in the hands of those who can use them.

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Featured News

Parents Need Their Own AARP The Atlantic November 18, 2022

In a guest essay in The Atlantic, Dana Suskind argues that raising kids in America is expensive and isolating; and that a caregivers’ lobby could help.

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U.S. Kids Are Falling behind Global Competition, but Brain Science Shows How to Catch Up Scientific American June 01, 2022

Writing for Scientific American, Dana Suskind and Lydia Denworth explore how family-friendly policies such as paid parental leave and high-quality child care improve children’s brain development and prospects for a better future.

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Addressing the roots of educational inequities by shifting parental beliefs Vox EU / CEPR December 12, 2021

This column reports the results of two TMW Center field experiments that reveal how shifting parents’ beliefs about the role of parental inputs in child development can impact parents’ behavior and be a pathway to reducing gaps in children’s skills.

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Featured Initiative

Any Time is 3Ts Time

A multimedia campaign designed to foster knowledge and build actionable skills that enable parents to promote their children’s foundational brain development.

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Featured Event

Dana Suskind at Aspen Ideas Health

Given the role that early childhood development plays in long-term wellbeing, ignoring parental needs is an unsustainable strategy. At the 2022 Aspen Ideas Health festival, Dana Suskind argued it’s time we give parents the robust support they deserve.

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Get to Know Us

For Parents & Caregivers

We believe parents and caregivers are an untapped resource with the incentive and capacity to make a difference in their children’s early brain development.

For Communities & Providers

We believe in harnessing the power of communities, educators, and healthcare workers to support families with young children.