Over the past 20 years, the American public’s understanding of early childhood development has evolved significantly. Today, people tend to have a general understanding of the negative impacts of significant adversity, and tend to appreciate the power of supportive relationships in building and protecting the developing brain.

However, when it comes to the impacts of our broader environments on children’s development—environments that are profoundly shaped by racism—we still have work to do. According to our research, the American public does not readily connect the concepts of place, race, and early childhood development.

In this brief, we identify an effective strategy for talking about the connections between place, racism, and early childhood development and provide a set of recommendations for advancing this strategy in your own work. The brief includes an explanation of:

• Core Ideas: The main ideas the new framing strategy is designed to communicate. For example: Racism affects how we design places and creates unequal impacts on children.

• Key Mindsets to Consider: The primary ways of thinking Americans rely upon when thinking about child development, place, and racism. For example: the idea that families alone influence children’s development.

• The Framing Strategy: Four types of frames that can be used to advance greater understanding of the connection between place, racism, and development: values, narratives, explanatory examples, and metonyms.