A special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Special Issue in May 2018 focused on the Implementation Research and Practice for Early Childhood Development. Here is an abstract of an article by Katie Maeve Murphy from International Rescue Committee with Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Alice J. Wuermli from Global TIES for Children: Implementation research for early childhood development programming in humanitarian contexts. The authors base their article on the premise that young children living in conditions of war, disaster, and displacement are at high risk for developmental difficulties that can follow them throughout their lives. While there is robust evidence supporting the need for ECD in humanitarian settings, implementation of ECD programming remains sparse, largely due to the lack of evidence of how and why these programs can improve outcomes in humanitarian settings. In order to build the evidence base for ECD in humanitarian settings, the authors review the current state of implementation research for ECD programming (targeting children 0-8) in humanitarian settings, through a literature review and a series of key informant interviews. Drawing from existing frameworks of implementation research and the findings from their analysis, they present a framework for ECD implementation research in humanitarian settings and propose an agenda for future research. You can find the whole article on the following link:

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nyas.13691