KHI NEWS SERVICE
TOPEKA, Aug. 2
House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, who will be in Boston next week for the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, will join a press conference scheduled Monday to announce a new Harvard University report on state policies that could benefit children.
The report is based on research by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard done at the request of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Neufeld”s spokesperson Sherriene Jones-Sontag said details of the report were embargoed until the press conference but that it is based on new knowledge about the developing brain, the human genome, and the interdependence of cognitive, social, and emotional development.
She said the report would include specific, “science-based” recommendations for policies that could be enacted by state legislatures for improving learning and behavior in children from birth to age five.
Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard and State Rep. Ruth Kagi, a Washington Democrat, also will participate in the news conference, Jones-Sontag said.
Neufeld is a member of the Legislative Working Group, a partnership between NCSL and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Jones-Sontag said.
“His interest in this area actually goes back to the late 1980s when Kansas started talking about and working on welfare reform,” Jones-Sontag said. “He became interested in Kansas kids who were basically caught up in the welfare trap and grew interested in finding what could give them equal opportunities. That”s when he started learning the importance of early childhood development.”
She said Neufeld, an Ingalls Republican, will also spend time at the NCSL annual meeting talking with different committees about how states can implement the report”s recommendation “when they get back home.”
NCSL is a bipartisan organization whose members includes legislators and staff from every state. The annual meeting is Sunday through Thursday in Boston.