The Memphis Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote about the tipping point, that moment when change happens quickly. It's the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point. Memphis appears to be at the tipping point ...
The Urban Child Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to the health and well-being of children from conception to age three in Memphis and Shelby County, TN.
April 2012 Edition of Research to Policy
As the parent of a child who lives on grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken nuggets, developing healthy eating habits in children has always been a mystery to me. Nutritionists tell us that the...
More 
Invest in Children Early and Keep Investing
That's the unmistakable message from the past two months as we brought leading experts to Memphis and asked them: what gives our children their best chances for healthy, positive futures? Their answers should ...
Robin Karr-Morse Discusses the Effects of Toxic Stress
There are times when we use words or phrases so often that their full impact gets lost in their repetition. We’ve dedicated ourselves this month to making sure that this doesn’t happen with a term we use ...
Growing Understanding of Brain Development is Music to Our Ears
As many musicians in Memphis know, becoming an overnight success usually takes years of hard work. It's the same with early childhood brain development. The Urban Child Institute has been working for a decade ...
A New Year's Resolution
It's the time of year when we look back at the past year and make resolutions for the new one. It's no different at The Urban Child Institute, as we step back to consider what has been done for children's brain ...
Soft Skills and Success Go Hand-in-Hand
It's never been truer than it is today that hard skills will get you an interview but soft skills will get the job for you and enable you to keep it. As with so many other individual skill sets, the foundation ...
A City that Cares for its Children
There are frequent conversations in Memphis about what our city brand should be. Some people suggest that it should be about transportation, other say logistics, and some say our river heritage. Those are ...
Cutting a Link in the Chain of Youth Violence
Several recent headlines sent shock waves throughout Memphis and Shelby County, but it was years earlier when the seeds were likely planted in the form of domestic violence that thwarted optimal brain ...
Marriage and Positive Parent Relationships are Best for Young Children
There was a recent headline in The Commercial Appeal that said, “Fewer two-parent homes in Memphis,” and it reported on a trend that has existed here for more than a decade. The article reported ...