Methodologies to evaluate early childhood development programs

Awareness of child development is increasing in developing countries. The health sector has advocated for early child development programmes for children with low birth weight, developmental delays, and from low-income disadvantaged environments. Estimates are that over 200 million children in developing countries under five years of age fail to reach their developmental potential because of risk factors associated with poverty. These risk factors are characterized in particular as including stunting, inadequate cognitive stimulation, iodine deficiencies, and iron deficiency anemia; but it is claimed that the evidence is also sufficient to warrant interventions for malaria, intrauterine growth restriction, maternal depression, exposure to violence, and exposure to heavy metals. Therefore, the paper concludes that governments and civil society should consider expanding high quality, cost-effective early child development programmes.In order to create a better informational basis for such studies in the future, it is important to be alert to opportunities for improving data collection and encouraging the collection of new and better data with better indicators of costs and benefits of Early Childhood Development (ECD) program.Careful systematic analyses of such data will permit enhancing importantly our knowledge of ECD programs in developing countries.