For the last several years, CYFC has organized much of its work around specific content areas in order to address children, youth and family issues in greater depth. After spending four years focusing on educational disparities, we are now transitioning to a new focus – the intersection of education and heath disparities.

There is a complex interplay between education and health. For children of color and disadvantaged children, this mixture can result in a “double whammy” of poor outcomes. For White or more advantaged children, health and education may influence each other in positive ways that set the child up for a healthy, productive and long life.

We believe this intersection manifests itself in four primary ways:
• Early health status influences later educational success, and vice versa;
• Health and educational performance may influence each other concurrently;
• Common root causes may result in both educational and health disparities;
• Prevention and intervention strategies to reduce disparities in one also may be appropriate for the other.

School success and health outcomes may be influenced by similar factors and variables, and therefore may benefit from similar approaches to research and intervention. CYFC will focus much of its work in the next several years on research, strategies and policies regarding how health and education intersect in children of color and disadvantaged children versus their White or more advantaged peers.

New Website Launched
Welcome to the new website for the Children, Youth and Family Consortium. The new site reflects CYFC’s ongoing commitment to providing researchers, practitioners and policy makers with information and services that improve the well-being of Minnesota’s children, youth and families.

Using a process that relied heavily on the user perspective we have better captured our work and the ways in which we do it. In addition to our own, we will continue to feature key research being done here at the University of Minnesota across the disciplines. So check back often as we work together on improving child and family research, policy and practice. Our new experts database will be available soon as well.