The COVID Generation at Age Five: Implications for Health, Development, and Parenting

The Early Relational Health (ERH) Funders Community and the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC) hosted this exclusive funders-only conversation with researchers from a world-leading study focused on early relational health and many related topics.

The COMBO Initiative has been following a large cohort of mothers and babies since early 2020 to study the effects of COVID and pandemic stress on child development and maternal-child health. By attaching key relational research to this unprecedented social disruption, COMBO offers a once-in-a-generation look at how different ERH constructs (attachment, emotional connection, bonding, etc.) map onto lifelong outcomes for both parents and children.

Moderated by Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez (pediatrician, health journalist, and host of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Healthy Children podcast), this exciting conversation led by Dr. Dani Dumitriu, inaugural director of the Center for Early Relational Health (CERH) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, shared findings from this hugely impactful study. A pediatrician, neuroscientist, and ERH field-builder, Dani is internationally recognized for her expertise in resiliency; family- and clinician-inclusive research design; and dyadic measures of parent-child health (such as maternal-infant health and connection, perinatal stress, and the relationship between ERH & life-course health outcomes).

We were also joined by other scientists connected with Columbia’s Center for Early Relational Health: 

• Dr. Catherine Monk, founding director of Women’s Mental Health @ Ob/Gyn and Director of the new Center for the Transition to Parenthood, guides research that unites perinatal psychiatry, developmental psychobiology, and neuroscience to focus on the earliest influences on a child’s developmental trajectory—and how to intervene early, to support both mother and child.
• Dr. Andréane Lavallée leads the very first research dedicated to understanding dyadic emotional synchrony between parents/caregivers and children. Her multidisciplinary work aims to uncover the mechanisms of ERH that yield long-term health and wellbeing.
• Dr. Paul Curtin innovates new computational approaches for exploring how early development connects to, and influences, future health outcomes. He is currently developing the Center for Early Relational Health’s unprecedented open-science data core, to build the evidence base for future validated interventions in maternal-infant/child health.
• Dr. Christine Austin develops biomarkers to build a new understanding of how and when environmental exposures impact development and health—including aspects of social exposures like stress and inflammation. Her work seeks to identify critical windows for effective prevention and fine-tune intervention strategies that improve child health and development.