Health inequality could be reduced by improving the social environments in which people live and work. That is the message of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles. In the second of a two-part series, they explain what this would mean for policy.

We all know that health is individual and biological – or is it? In the first of a two-part series, California researchers set out the building blocks for a radical shift in health policy.

Colleagues say she’s having a “major impact on research in social and emotional learning.” Now a US-based nonprofit has presented her with the Joseph E. Zins Award for bringing out the best in SEL interventions. PA asks Celene Domitrovich how she does it.

The largely positive response from the Westminster government of five officially commissioned significant studies have had little publicity due to another event – but now they will be enhanced by two further studies that have been announced.

Does foster care work? As a popular form of early intervention, which affects deeply the children involved, some of the answers to this have emerged from findings of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.

Child abuse is a worldwide problem but enormous variations in prevalence and type from country to country post particular problems for those designing preventative programs.

When parents have a good relationship with each other, their children tend to thrive. Inspired by their own experiences as partners and parents, Berkeley professors Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip Cowan have spent more than three decades transforming our understanding of family relationships.

What’s the best way to help children navigate tough school transitions? An unusual intervention that focuses not on the children but on parents’ relationships is still showing positive results – 10 years later.

In the Guardian’s recent news article, Glasgow: the city where they die young, highlights the considerably higher rates of premature deaths in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK. A longitudinal study of a Scottish cohort identifies early childhood behavioral problems as a potential mechanism behind premature adult death.

A universal prevention program that draws its inspiration from the Three Little Pigs proves more successful at nurturing self-esteem than at preventing depression.

Harvard Professor Jack Shonkoff describes how neuroscience has the potential to build bridges between disparate fields of health, education and social care and can offer radical new theories of change for building a positive early childhood.

A chance to emulate the social innovations of our Victorian forbears, or a search for fool’s gold? A second report by Graham Allen MP makes the case for how public and private investment can be harnessed to fund early intervention and deliver massive savings for society.

A recent study conducted in schools in some of Montreal’s poorest neighbourhoods finds that combining a game aimed at reducing classroom disruption with improved teaching can boost attention and literacy skills in low-income students. But can it help children who are inattentive to start with become better readers?

A program to improve the behavior of “late placed” adopted children doesn’t work to improve children’s behavior – but it does increase adoptive parents’ satisfaction. London researchers ask: does this deliver value for money?

How do public agencies and policy-makers know whether they are effective at improving child outcomes? They don’t, argues a social work scholar. The problem, she says, is that system contact and actual service provision are so hard to disentangle.

Finnish researchers have developed a computer game that may be better than human intervention at helping at-risk readers catch up with their peers.