Developmental Origins of Health and Disease

Allan Schore integrated a substantial amount of technical information directly relevant to the practicing pediatrician. The published findings caused the German Association of Pediatricians to invite Schore for a keynote address and workshop for the 107th Annual Conference of the German Association for Pediatricians on the issue of the developmental origins of health and disease. A scientific consensus has emerged that the origin of adult disease can often be found due to developmental and biological disruptions occurring during the prenatal and perinatal periods of life. Developmental neuroscience is moving from studies of later maturing left brain conscious verbal cognitive processes into the early preverbal development of adaptive emotion processing right brain systems in pre- and postnatal periods. The educational field and policy makers need to implement the strategies as well as to formulate evidence-based neurobiologically informed training programs.