The Daily Free Press: Prof. Paris to Lead New BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being
Boston University student newspaper The Daily Free Press announces BU School of Social Work associate professor Ruth Paris’s appointment as the inaugural director of the new BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being.
Chair of the Clinical Practice Department at BUSSW, Ruth Paris is recognized for her expertise in trauma and infant and early childhood mental health, including a particular focus on families struggling with substance and opioid use disorders. With support from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), other federal funders and private foundations, she has developed and evaluated multiple attachment-based interventions targeted at vulnerable families with young children.
Excerpted from “Wheelock to launch BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being” (The Daily Free Press) by Juncheng Quan:
Early childhood is a really important time of life,” Paris said. “A lot hinges on what happens in the first five years of life, probably even a lot in the first three years of life.”
Paris said education research in very young children is critical because the challenges, including mental health, housing and food security, adolescents and adults face can often be addressed earlier in development.
“You can make a huge difference in someone’s life,” she said, “if you attend to the challenges that people experience in early childhood.”
Paris said the Institute evolved from academic collaboration in 2019 that strived to create interdisciplinary work at a local and global level.
“We realized that we needed an entity on the BU campus that would bridge all of those different schools and colleges,” Paris said, “and that would pretty much foster collaboration among all of the early childhood scholars.”