Photo Courtesy of Dina Castro

Early childhood

Improving the Lives of Lesotho’s Children

BU Wheelock’s Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being joins long-term project in the mountainous African nation

BU Wheelock’s Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being is joining an interdisciplinary project aimed at improving children’s development, health, and well-being in the southern African nation of Lesotho.

Brian Jack, a professor of family medicine at the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, launched the Lesotho Boston Health Alliance (LeBoHA) in 2004 to increase the number of family practitioners in a country where HIV infects nearly one in four adults and the tuberculosis infection rate is the highest in the world. Twenty years ago, just 130 physicians were working in the country of 2 million people. Since that time, LeBoHA has partnered with the nation’s government to recruit hundreds more doctors to return home, launched the country’s first training programs for physicians, nurses, and midwives, and built a postgraduate medical campus. In 2022, the alliance won the UN Interagency Task Force and WHO Special Programme on Primary Health Care Award.

LeBoHA is now partnering with BU Wheelock’s Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being to expand its scope: to improve the nation’s early childhood care and education infrastructure. Dina Castro, the institute’s director and Bahamdan Professor in Early Childhood Well-Being, and Dean Emeritus David Chard joined faculty from BU’s School of Social Work in Lesotho in February 2023 to visit early childhood programs and meet with leaders in government, higher education, and nonprofits. A new report, funded by the institute and coauthored by Ann Scheunemann, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Boston Medical Center, investigates the childhood mental health landscape in Lesotho. Castro says additional research projects and initiatives in Lesotho are in the works.

“We cannot just see one piece without paying attention to the other dimensions of children’s lives, because they are all related,” Castro says. “A child that is not healthy cannot learn. A child that is not well-nourished is going to be falling asleep in the classroom. Physical health and mental health are connected, and psychological well-being and behaviors are connected.”

Jack says he is thrilled that BU Wheelock is getting involved in the country, which has become so important to him, adding, “Such an experienced team will greatly contribute to assist the children and families of the Mountain Kingdom.”