Reinforcing Data

An Archive of Sources and Data Reinforcing the Information Provided by the Institute for InterGroup Understanding

The Huge Advantage and Real Value of Medicare for All

If we want a win-win situation for every group in America, one of the key ways of doing that would be to provide health care coverage and better health care to everyone.

We can actually do that, and we can spend less than we are now on health care if we become a more effective purchaser of care and coverage as a country.

We are extremely inept as a country today when it comes to buying care. We spend $3 trillion — far more than any country in the world by a huge margin — and we get unsafe, unconnected, inconsistent, and badly organized care, and our caregivers profit more when care goes wrong and when we are less healthy.

We could fix all of those issues, cover everyone, and ensure caregivers focus on continuously improving care — rather than protecting their revenue streams — if we just make some basic changes in the way we buy care. Read the entire Medicare Advantage for All proposal.

Why a Baby's Connection with Parents Matters

In pediatrics, attachment is the emotional connection that develops between a young child and a parent or other caregiver. Read the full article at The New York Times.

Chilling Brain Scans Show the Impact of a Mother's Love on a Child's Brain Size

A shocking comparison of brain scans from two three-year-old children reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a mother's love has on a child's brain development. Read more>>

Baby’s Brain Begins Now: Conception to Age 3

The fact that children are affected by their surroundings is too obvious to bear repeating. Child development specialists have produced decades of research showing that the environment of a child’s earliest years can have effects that last a lifetime.

Poverty Fact Sheet: Brain Drain: A Child’s Brain on Poverty

Living in poverty can put children at risk for health and behavioral problems, but could disadvantage actually affect brain develop- ment? Emerging evidence suggests that living in poverty may indeed alter how the brain grows, which may have implications for a child’s life chances through adulthood. Read the full article at the Morgridge Center.

Attachment and Maternal Love During Infancy and Childhood

Physical, social and emotional interaction and contact during infancy is critically important in physical, neurological, sensory, cognitive, intellectual, social and emotional development. Indeed, babies need their "mamas" and all the love and attendant physical and emotional interaction they can get. Read More>>

Learning Gaps In Schools Can’t Be Ended By Schools

"Learning gaps for children continue to grow in a number of cities and states, and most of the efforts by schools and communities to make those gaps disappear have either had minimum impact or have failed," the article said. Read More>>

Belize Builds Full Birth-to-Adulthood Child Development Strategy

The government of Belize worked with the Harvard Center for the Developing Child to build the first ever national plan for complete child development. Communities who want to do th best developmental programs for their children can learn from that Belize strategy.

California's School Test Scores Reveal Vast Racial Achievement Gap

"The first results of a new test on student performance in California schools revealed a majority of students failed to meet state standards in math and English — with a stark racial achievement gap despite decades of efforts to close it," the article said. Read More>>

A Map for Social Navigation in the Human Brain

"Deciphering the neural mechanisms of social behavior has propelled the growth of social neuroscience. The exact computations of the social brain, however, remain elusive. Here we investigated how the human brain tracks ongoing changes in social relationships using functional neuroimaging," the article said. Read More »

Longer Duration of Breastfeeding Linked with Higher IQ & Learning Ability

"Longer duration of breastfeeding is linked with increased intelligence in adulthood, longer schooling, and higher adult earnings, a study following a group of almost 3,500 newborns for 30 years," the article said. Read More>>

Language Gap Between Rich and Poor Children Begins in Infancy

"Stanford researchers have now found that these socioeconomic status (SES) differences begin to emerge much earlier in life: By 18 months of age, toddlers from disadvantaged families are already several months behind more advantaged children in language proficiency," the article said. Read More>>

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts

“On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging,” the article said. Read More>>

The Sentencing Project: Report for the United Nations Human Rights Committee

(Racial minorities are more likely to be arrested than White Americans, more likely to be convicted if arrested, and have longer sentences imposed when convicted. African American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than White males and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested than Hispanic males. At current trends, one of three African American males will go to prison over a lifetime. One of six Hispanic males and one of 17 White males will be imprisoned.)

Mayo Clinic Grand Rounds Talk About Saving Kids

Please click the link below to read George C. Halvorson's 2016 Mayo Clinic Grand Rounds Talk ~

"Sixty percent of African American males in this country who drop out of school end up in jail. The recidivism rate for those prisoners is nearly 80 percent. Those numbers are horrible — and they result in life trajectories that damage far too many," Halvorson said. Read More>>

Crime vs. Diplomas

"CRIME Doesn’t Pay, but DIPLOMAS Do! Every year approximately 1.3 million students — THAT’s 7,000 every school day — do not graduate from high school as scheduled. About 75 percent of America’s state prison inmates, almost 59 percent of federal inmates, and 69 percent of jail inmates did not complete high school. (Note: In most Southern states these percentages are higher.) Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as high school graduates," the article said. Read More>>

The 30 Million Word Gap

"The Role of Parent-Child Verbal Interaction in Language and Literacy Development, By The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading — In 1995, research showed a link between kids’ school success and how much their parents talked to them. This brief presents supporting data correlating the low-income/high-income achievement gap to parenting skills and differences in the quality and quantity of verbal interaction received as a young child," the article said. Read More>>

These two brains both belong to three-year-olds, so why is one so much bigger?

"The damage caused by neglect and other forms of abuse comes by degrees: the more severe the neglect, the greater the damage. Eighty percent of brain cells that a person will ever have are manufactured during the first two years after birth. If the process of building brain cells and connections between them goes wrong, the deficits are permanent." Read the full article from The Telegraph.

Please click the links below to read George Halvorson's Huffington Blog posts:

NOT TEACHING PARENTS ABOUT EARLY BRAIN DEVELOPMENT IS A MASSIVE AND DAMAGING PUBLIC HEALTH FAILURE

"The biggest single public health deficit and failure in America today is the fact that almost no parents of newborn children have been told or taught that they can improve their child's learning abilities significantly by exercising their baby's brain in the first three years of life," Halvorson said. Read More>>

BRAINS ARE STRENGTHENED IN THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF LIFE

"We have more people in prison in this country than any other country in the world. On a per capita basis, we imprison more than three times as many people as any other western country. Only Russia comes close to us in the number of prisoners per 1,000 citizens, and we significantly exceed them," Halvorson said. Read More>>

READ/TALK/SING — TO BUILD STRONG BRAINS IN VERY YOUNG CHILDREN

"We now know that the first three years of life are the years when the brains of children build their internal connections and become strong. Children whose brains get exercise in the first three years of life have bigger brains — and those children are more likely to stay in school, avoid challenging health situations, and literally stay out of jail," Halvorson said. Read More>>

A MILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY FOR MOTHERS

"Brains are strengthened in the first three years of life. Those first three years give us a golden opportunity to strengthen the brain of each child. The children whose brains are strengthened by having their mother or other people read to them and talk to them every day from birth on are far less likely to drop out of school," Halvorson said. Read More>>

THE TIME TO STRENGTHEN THE BRAINS OF OUR CHILDREN IS NOW — SHARE THAT INFORMATION WITH MOTHERS AND FAMILIES

"Most people do not know how important the first three years of life are for the brain development of each child. Many people believe that kindergarten is the time when the education process begins. Those people are wrong. The process starts with birth. Brain strengthening and learning ability development literally start at birth. The first few years are critically important — and we can now predict with a significant degree of accuracy by age three which children will not be able to read when they get to school," Halvorson said. Read More>>

KINDERGARTEN IS TOO LATE

"Kindergarten is too late for a lot of children. That is a sad but biologically accurate fact of life. The basic and most important mental development processes that are needed to help each child read, stay in school, and stay out of prison actually happen before the age of five," Halvorson said. Read More>>