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Ed Zigler believed that developmental science should be applied to policy, programs, and practices to improve the lives of children and families. He shared this belief with others and paved the way for alternative career pathways. This paper describes how Ed influenced others to connect science with program development, evaluation, and policy, and created networks of applied scholars. Ed Zigler's influence is broad and spans beyond academia to influencer organizations. We weave our own professional experiences throughout the paper, which we organized around three lessons we learned from Ed: (a) explore alternative career pathways and build the field; (b) start with the science and think application; (c) apply the knowledge and influence policy.

In response to U.S. Public Health Service projects promoting attention to disparities in the outcomes of mental health treatments, in July 2001, the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education convened a group of national leaders in bioethics, multicultural research, and ethnic minority mental health to produce a living document to guide ethical decision making for mental health research involving ethnic minority children and youths. This report summarizes the key recommendations distilled from these discussions.

Social and economic conditions since the creation of Head Start in 1965 have worsened. The stresses of economic restructuring in America and the pervasiveness of violence have severely eroded the capacity of many families to provide safe and caring homes in strong communities. The necessary adaptation of Head Start to these new conditions involves the essential linkage of early childhood and family support approaches with community economic development. This strategy must include a reappraisal of mental health paradigms that will enable children, youth, and families to be healthy and productive members of their neighborhoods and country. Although public support for Head Start remains strong, considerable rethinking about a Head Start for the 21st century is now occurring; results will affect the quality of life for the entire society.

Research on the development of adolescents has made significant progress in the past 10-15 years, but is not yet fully mature. Future research must (a) deepen the recent work in understanding normal adolescent development, particularly among American youth from understudied racial and ethnic minority groups and through more longitudinal studies; (b) balance pressures to implement urgent preventive interventions for adolescents with the need for systematic evaluations that will lead to improvements in these approaches, including those that promote healthy patterns in all adolescents and target clusters of health-compromising behaviors rather than single ones; and (c) identify specific features of the range of settings in which adolescents participate that do or do not foster healthy development.

The review acknowledges that research on the family and its contribution to achievement in ethnic minority children is important. Past research and theorizing suggest the need for new directions, however. For example, research in educational achievement predicts educational failure for African-American students and educational success for Asian-American students. Little differentiation is made either among African-Americans or among Asian-Americans of different cultural, language, immigration, and economic backgrounds. The theory and design of research on family and educational achievement have been influenced by prevailing societal stereotypes. Research and policy implications of this review include the need to move toward cultural/ecological theories of achievement socialization and development.