{"id":587313,"date":"2018-06-03T00:03:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T06:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=587313"},"modified":"2018-06-04T13:41:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T19:41:31","slug":"florida-city-nurtures-babies-with-brain-bags-for-parents-can-nm-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/florida-city-nurtures-babies-with-brain-bags-for-parents-can-nm-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida city nurtures babies with &#8216;Brain Bags&#8217; for parents. Can NM do the same?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_587321\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-587321\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-771x578.jpg\" alt=\"Brain bag\" width=\"771\" height=\"578\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-771x578.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-336x252.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-1170x878.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags-800x600.jpg 800w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/BrainBags.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Pensacola News Journal<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The `Brain Bag\u2019 handed out to every new mother by Pensacola hospitals includes books and advice.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Communities nationwide are trying to crack the same nut: how to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor kids. Pensacola, Fla., became one of the country\u2019s first cities to dub itself an \u201cEarly Learning City.\u201d With leadership from the business community, it linked up with the University of Chicago\u2019s Thirty Million Words project to educate new parents on how to build their child\u2019s brain<\/em> <em>&#8212; a project<\/em> <em>that could hold lessons for New Mexico.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>PENSACOLA, Fla. &#8212; Water shimmers around every curve in the road: an emerald beach, a blue bayou, a choppy bay. Vines of lilac grow like weeds. The air is thick with humidity.<\/p>\n<p>To the eye, this coastal community on the Florida Panhandle looks nothing like New Mexico. But on paper \u2013 when it comes to child well-being \u2013 they could be first cousins.<\/p>\n<p>Much like New Mexico, a third of Pensacola\u2019s children aren\u2019t kindergarten-ready. More than a fifth of its high schoolers fail to graduate. Thirty-eight percent of its households are headed by a single parent. More than half of births are covered by Medicaid, while more than a third of pregnant women lack adequate prenatal care.<\/p>\n<p>Led by an invigorated business community, Pensacola has taken up early childhood as its cause, dubbing itself an \u201cEarly Learning City\u201d and rallying around a program to universally educate all new moms \u2013 5,000 each year &#8212; on the importance of building their children\u2019s brains from infancy.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article is part of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/searchlightnm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Searchlight New Mexico\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0year-long journalistic investigation into child well-being in New Mexico. Read the series, Raising New Mexico,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/series\/raising-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Related<\/h3>\n<p>\u2022\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/birth-of-the-brain-bag-a-conversation-with-quint-studer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Birth of the &#8216;brain bag:&#8217; A conversation with Quint Studer<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/journalist-sees-florida-hometown-impacted-by-child-well-being-initiatives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Journalist sees Florida hometown impacted by child well-being initiatives<\/a><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Last year, Pensacola\u2019s three major birthing hospitals introduced a campaign centered around a gift to new parents: the \u201cBrain Bag.\u201d It\u2019s literally a bag full of resources on brain development, based on a research program at the University of Chicago called Thirty Million Words.<\/p>\n<p>The bag is a door opener with new parents, said Catherine Kovaleski, a labor and delivery nurse at Pensacola\u2019s Baptist Hospital &#8212; a way to start a conversation to dispel myths and share the latest brain science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe laugh about it when we bring it up: \u2018You just had a baby! Let\u2019s talk about getting them ready for kindergarten!\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>According to oft-cited research, children from privileged families hear, on average, 30 million or more words by the end of age 3 than children from low-income families &#8212; setting higher-income kids on a path for greater success in school.<\/p>\n<p>To close the achievement gap, the theory goes, a community must close the language gap. The Brain Bags are the brainchild of a Pensacola nonprofit called the Studer Community Institute, founded by health care guru Quint Studer, who made a fortune in hospital consulting before setting his sights on improving Pensacola.<\/p>\n<p>Each bag contains a binder with a bib and rattle reminding parents to \u201ctalk, talk, talk.\u201d There is a picture book, \u201cP is for Pelican,\u201d and a workbook with developmental milestones for parents. The bags, free to parents, cost $25 apiece to produce and are assembled by adults with developmental disabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The $108,000 project is privately funded by a network of women donors and embraced by the business community; its outcomes will be tracked once babies born in the past year hit kindergarten.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn health care, the majority of money is spent on symptoms &#8212; the same thing in education,\u201d said Studer, who has led the \u201cEarly Learning City\u201d effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Florida, we tried to get some money for [age] 0 to 5, but it all went to \u2018K\u2019 and above because that is who has got all the lobbying power: the public school system and the universities,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the reality is, if 85 percent of the brain is developed by age 3, that is where we need to be focused. What we\u2019re really trying to do is treat the cause.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Sidestepping government<\/h3>\n<p>Across the country communities are experimenting with early childhood programs. New Mexico increased its state investment in early childhood programs to more than $300 million in fiscal year 2018. Child advocates, citing that same brain science, have demanded an additional $140 million annually from the Land Grant Permanent Fund for early childhood programs. Their proposals have met failure in the state Legislature seven years running.<\/p>\n<p>Pensacola has given up waiting on the state and federal governments.<\/p>\n<p>Business leaders a year ago were persuaded by emerging brain science showing how about 85 percent of a child\u2019s brain &#8212; including its 100 billion neurons &#8212; is hard-wired by the end of age 3. Language is what builds these brain connections and enhances a child\u2019s capacity to learn; the most important component for building strong brains is parent talk.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The Brain Bags emerged as one potential solution, as well as an effective fundraising tool for the philanthropic and private sectors.<\/p>\n<p>Pensacola\u2019s approach follows a national trend in which business and local leaders are increasingly assuming the mantle of responsibility to solve all kinds of entrenched problems. They\u2019re taking the lead, not just for the good of the community, but for the twin purposes of workforce and economic development.<\/p>\n<p>Take the Florida farmworkers who dramatically improved their work conditions without new government regulation or legislation by creating a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fairfoodprogram.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cFair Food Program\u201d<\/a> in conjunction with farmers and retail food companies. The program\u00a0ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms.<\/p>\n<p>Or the now decade-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.strivetogether.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">StriveTogether partnership<\/a> of 300 business and community groups in Cincinnati that created a framework for disparate organizations to work toward specific educational goals: The project, which has since gone national, has boosted kindergarten readiness and high school graduation rates in communities around the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to look at new places for new solutions\u201d to entrenched, generational problems that government clearly hasn\u2019t solved, says Susan Marquis, dean of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School. \u201cGovernments still matter but increasingly nonprofits, NGOs and even the private sector &#8212; they are not only influencing policy but making and implementing policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>The talk connection<\/h3>\n<p>It began as a reporting project. The Studer Community Institute hired former journalists to write a report on the causes and impact of poverty in Pensacola. Their research led them through a maze of crushing statistics and sociological theories &#8212; until they found Dana Suskind at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Suskind is a pediatric cochlear implant surgeon who implants hearing aids in hearing-impaired babies and toddlers. It\u2019s a rewarding profession filled with emotional moments. But from the very beginning of her surgical practice in 2005, Suskind encountered a frustration: While her pediatric patients from middle- and upper-income families rapidly caught up in language acquisition and speech, the children of low-income families did not. She set out to discover why.<\/p>\n<p>That is when she discovered the seminal work of psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley, who in the 1980s were the first to identify the language gap.<\/p>\n<p>Their research followed 42 families in Kansas City, Kansas, over three years, observing baby development from 9 months to nearly 4 years old. Based on characteristics like parental occupation, maternal education and income, they divided the families into three groups: high, middle and low socioeconomic status families.<\/p>\n<p>After recording and analyzing everything \u201cdone by the children, to them and around them\u201d for an hour per family each month over the course of three years, Hart and Risley found remarkable similarities in parenting approaches and goals. Parents all \u201csocialized their children to a common cultural standard,\u201d and the kids all learned to talk.<\/p>\n<p>But the difference in the language they heard \u2013 the quality and quantity of words \u2013 was stunning.<\/p>\n<p>On average, in the course of one hour, the highest socioeconomic status children heard 2,000 words; the children of low-income families heard only 600. The highest-income parents responded to their kids an average of 250 times an hour; the lowest-income parents about 50 times. The gap by 4 years old? Thirty million words.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the most significant and most concerning difference? Verbal approval,\u201d Suskind wrote in her book\u00a0<em>Thirty Million Words: Building a Child\u2019s Brain\u00a0<\/em>(Dutton, 2015). \u201cChildren in the highest socioeconomic status heard about 40 expressions of verbal approval per hour. Children in welfare homes, about four.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some scholars have questioned Hart and Risley\u2019s findings, discrediting the small sample size and challenging the idea that altering language at home could help children overcome extreme social inequality.<\/p>\n<p>But Suskind focused on a subtle point in her study: The essential factor that determined a child\u2019s future learning trajectory wasn\u2019t socioeconomic status. It was the quality &#8212; and positive nature \u2013 of the language spoken. Money didn\u2019t matter; words did.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChildren in homes in which there was a lot of parent talk, no matter the educational or economic status of that home, did better,\u201d Suskind wrote. \u201cIt was as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Chicago, the Thirty Million Words project today teaches new parents to \u201ctune in, take turns and talk more\u201d &#8212; the three T\u2019s for paying attention to a child\u2019s cues, taking conversational turns and talking more. Suskind envisions the program being implemented in prenatal care, at birthing hospitals, in pediatric clinics and home visits around the city.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we aspire to is a population-level shift where all parents and caregivers understand the power of language to build their child\u2019s brains and know how to implement it,\u201d she told Searchlight New Mexico. \u201cWe want it to be in the groundwater.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Spreading the message<\/h3>\n<p>In Pensacola, the hospitals were an obvious place to start, since virtually every birth in the city occurs in one of the three facilities. Baptist Hospital, Sacred Heart Hospital and West Florida Hospital have been cutthroat competitors in nearly every medical specialty. But when the CEOs were individually approached, each agreed to collaborate.<\/p>\n<p>Baptist Chief Executive Mark Faulkner said, \u201cI personally spoke to the CEO at West Florida and said, \u2018Y\u2019all need to do this.\u2019 For us it was a no brainer, no pun intended. If there is evidence that says this is good, it is right in line with our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It will take at least five years to see whether the project, which began in April 2017, has any impact on kindergarten readiness. But moms who have received the Brain Bags say the information has been enlightening.<\/p>\n<p>Kristina Broxterman, a 30-year-old hair stylist, gave birth to baby Lincoln Josiah in January at Baptist.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was actually really encouraging,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me, I didn\u2019t understand the amount of brain development before three years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Studer Community Institute acknowledges that it will take more than a bag and a conversation in the delivery room to change decades of inequality. It plans to reinforce the \u201ctune in, take turns and talk more\u201d message to parents wherever it will have the most impact.<\/p>\n<p>The next step will be to present new mothers with a video on brain development, part of the University of Chicago\u2019s research. Studer also plans to press area pediatricians to reiterate the Thirty Million Words message at well-child visits.<\/p>\n<p>Reggie Dogan, a former journalist and researcher who helped shape the Institute\u2019s mission, calls the outreach effort \u201ca day-to-day struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Parents, especially mothers in poverty, \u201cmay increase their reading today, but will they continue three years, five years, down the road?\u201d he asked. \u201cOr will this child fall by the wayside just like the parent did? That is what scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Communities nationwide are trying to figure out how to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor kids. Can New Mexico learn from what&#8217;s being tried in Pensacola?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":587321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[234,146],"class_list":["post-587313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-children","tag-poverty","series-raising-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}