A comprehensive study of the health and development of thousands of Jamaican children from birth over the next three years is expected to influence policy and programmes for many years to come, stakeholders say.

Funded with US$500,000 (about JA$43 million) from the Japanese government through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the study will for the first time in the Caribbean consider in detail the impact of the first two years of life on development.

“Twenty five years ago information on the impact of early childhood on the development of the nation was not as enriched as it is today,” said team leader Professor Maureen Samms-Vaughan in explaining the importance of the study. “This study will allow us to focus on those absolutely critical first two years.”

The project involving 7,000 children, to be executed by the University of the West Indies’ Department of Child Health, follows a similar ongoing cohort study which has tracked the development of 10,500 children at intervals over the last 24 years from their birth in 1986.

That study has impacted on policies for perinatal health, maternal health, the reduction of maternal death, and identified factors predicting violence and aggression and school performance said Samms-Vaughan, who is professor of child health, child development and behaviour at UWI.

The study’s findings on the effect of television on children led to the implementation of the Broadcasting Commission’s programming code, while certain diseases such as asthma were predicted from birth factors, she added.

The new study will also look at parenting and fathering in particular, the impact of parents’ mental health, and early interventions into child development.

Japan’s Ambassador to Jamaica, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, in expressing the importance of the study, said ensuring human security was an important pillar of Japan’s assistance to developing countries.

“I feel very close and familiar to this project,” Ambassador Yamaguchi said, disclosing that his mother was a midwife who worked past the age of 80 and delivered more than 7,000 babies during her career.

“Japan has assumed a leading role in the international community in making human security a component of development assistance,” the ambassador said, noting that Japan recently pledged US$5 million over five years to save the lives of 680,000 mothers and 11.3 million children worldwide in cooperation with other partners.