# Early Childhood Education and Violence Prevention Across the Life Course and Generations

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2024 · $48,974

## Abstract

This F31 project seeks to advance the evidence on the violence prevention potential of early childhood
education programs and examine the interactive effects of such programs with multi-level social, economic,
and environmental factors on violence across the life course. In 2020, there were 4.6 million nonfatal violent
victimizations and almost 25,000 homicides in the United States (US).1,2 That year 15.2 million people aged 12
and older reported serious thoughts of suicide, and over 45,000 people died by suicide.1,3 While firearm access
is a significant determinant of violent death,4 risk is also profoundly determined by social and structural
conditions across the life course and inter-generationally, including poverty, early life adversity, and economic
opportunity.5 Despite evidence that sources of risk and resilience begin early in life and accumulate over the
life course and across generations, and that early childhood education can address shared developmental
etiologies of multiple forms of violence, there are critical gaps in our understanding of the long-term effects of
large-scale early childhood education programs on violence.6 This F31 project examines the long-term effects
of Head Start—one of the oldest and largest preschool programs for vulnerable children in the US—on inter-
personal violence perpetration and suicidal ideation, and the social and structural factors that modify those
effects. In Aim 1, we will examine inter-generational effects of Head Start on the second generation’s suicidal
ideation and inter-personal violence perpetration in adolescence and adulthood using a quasi-random variation
in Head Start roll-out over time and place and inter-generationally linked nationally-representative data from
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and Child & Young Adult cohorts. In Aim 2, we will examine
whether Aim 1 effects are modified by offspring sex and race/ethnicity, community disadvantage, and state
policies related to economic opportunity and structural racism. In Aim 3, we will examine the intra-generational
effects of Head Start on handgun carrying and inter-personal violence perpetration in adolescence and
adulthood using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. In Aim 4 will examine whether Aim
3 effects are modified by participant sex and race/ethnicity, community disadvantage, and state policies related
to economic opportunity and structural racism. All Aims will use targeted maximum likelihood estimation, a
doubly-robust estimator for causal inference with observational data. This project provides the opportunity to
evaluate the effects of a widely implemented program to reduce the toll of violence in the nation. It will
contribute to scholarship on both early childhood education and violence prevention at a time when policy
conversations about violence and its social determinants are increasing in prominence and urgency. This
project will provide the F31 candidate rigorous training in 1)...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10845489
- **Project number:** 5F31HD112202-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Julia Schleimer
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $48,974
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-06-16 → 2025-06-15

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10845489

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10845489, Early Childhood Education and Violence Prevention Across the Life Course and Generations (5F31HD112202-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10845489. Licensed CC0.

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