With the 2021 launch of FRONTIER (Fostering Research on Neuro-Prevention via Infrastructure, Education and Relationships), founder and director Diana Fishbein is furthering her mission of mitigating the impacts of adversity and promoting healthy development for children and adolescents.

The Impact Center at FPG has created an exciting new resource, “Implementation Science at Work.” The podcast, which dropped its initial three episodes in November, explores questions and strategies in implementation science including tackling community health issues, reducing health disparities, and improving community and population outcomes through building capacity.

Researchers at FPG have recently launched the Child Find ACCESS project, a model demonstration to improve services and results for infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities. The project, which aligns with the Institute’s commitment to equity, is designed to address ongoing challenges experienced by states in identifying infants and toddlers needing early intervention services, which has resulted in persistent racial inequities and disparities in identification rates.

Allison De Marco, MSW, PhD, an advanced research scientist at FPG, has been selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for its prestigious Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program, alongside two colleagues, Danielle Spurlock, PhD, UNC Department of City and Regional Planning, and Donna Carrington, executive director of Community Empowerment Fund.

During the final webinar celebration of the Institute’s 50th anniversary of excellence in TA, the emphasis was on looking to the future. The keynote speaker and panelists focused on inspiring the early childhood education and care field going forward, and the importance of centering the lived experiences of the children and families served.

After honoring the 50-year history of technical assistance (TA) at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) by looking at the organization’s past work on behalf of children and their families, TA leaders celebrated this momentous anniversary by examining their current work.

Recently, to commemorate the golden anniversary of FPG’s celebrated technical assistance (TA) program, TA leaders and other notables in the field of early childhood education gathered for three sessions entitled Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence in Technical Assistance. The first in a three-part series, this article covers session one, "Reflecting on the wisdom of the past."

Clare Harrop, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences and Faculty Fellow at FPG, has received a 5-year, $3.28 million R01 award from the NIH (Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development) to chart the impact of assigned sex at birth on developmental trajectories in young autistic children.

During 2006 to 2014 as a post-doc and researcher at FPG, Iheoma U. Iruka, PhD, started thinking about the need for a center dedicated to the study of Black children and families. She realized that vision soon after her return to FPG in 2020. Iruka, a research professor in the Department of Public Policy and a Faculty Fellow at FPG, is the founding director of FPG’s Equity Research Action Coalition.