The first thousand days of life are a critical and important period of development for helping ensure positive long-term health and educational outcomes. Primary care pediatricians can play an important role in fostering healthy child development by providing preventive care that promotes safe, stable, and nurturing parent-child relationships. By gaining a better understanding about the impact that toxic stress can have on a childs social, emotional and physical well-being as well as the role Adverse Childhood Experiences ACEs play, better identification and understanding will help you identify those who may be at risk or those who have already experienced toxic stress.

In response to this evolving understanding, the EBCD Leadership Workgroup, with assistance from our consultant Kelly J. Towey, MEd, developed five modules to provide some key information and resources on early brain development, toxic stress, ACEs, parenting and how to be an advocate in your community. We designed these to be flexible and adaptable to a variety of needs and situations: group presentations and discussions and individual learners are both intended audiences. Some of you may be familiar with these concepts but require a framework to be able to effectively share this information with others; I hope these modules will enable you to do that. For others, this may be largely novel information that you will review on your own. I think youll find that these modules will give you a good foundation for understanding the principles of EBCD.

Each module includes a PowerPoint presentation with presenter notes, as well as a guide that provides tips for presenting the content, suggestions on timing, and additional activities and video clips that could be added to the presentation. Additional resources are also provided for those seeking more in-depth information. For the online learner, there is a guide to help navigate through the materials. Each module also contains prompting questions and case studies that you can use to encourage active participation.

The modules and their accompanying guides were intentionally designed as stand-alone presentations and do not need to be viewed sequentially; likewise, time constraints may make it possible to not cover all the modules these were written to accommodate that eventuality as well. However, as you are able, I suggest starting with the Core Story module. This module will help provide a framework for the subsequent modules.

Each module is designed to take about 45 minutes, incorporate real time learning, as well as to be fun and interactive. While each guide is unique to the content of the specific training module, they also include intentional repetition of key themes and follow a similar format. Upon completion of each training module, I encourage you to have your attendees complete the evaluation form and send it to the AAP so that we may continue to review and refine the content of the modules. We view you as an important partner in our efforts to provide training on EBCD and value your feedback. Please dont hesitate to contact the EBCD staff at ebcdstaff@aap.org or 847/434-7941 regarding any questions you may have or if you would like to share your comments and input with us.

Source: American Academy of Pediatrics

Available at: http://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/EBCD/Pages/educationModules.aspx