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High-Quality Early Education and Care Bring Health Benefits 30 Years Later

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From the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute:

Long-term Health Benefits for FPG’s Abecedarian Kids

With substantial implications for health care and prevention policy, FPG is reporting today that children who received high-quality early care and education in FPG’s Abecedarian Project from birth until age 5 enjoy better physical health in their mid-30s than peers who did not attend the childcare-based program.

The findings appear today in Science and are the result of FPG’s collaboration with Nobel laureate James J. Heckman. Not only did FPG and Heckman’s colleagues determine that people who had received high-quality early care and education in the 1970s through the project are healthier now—significant measures also indicate better health lies ahead for them . . . [more]