About Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development

The health, learning, and well-being of all our children are central to the fabric of our society. Efforts to optimize development in early childhood in particular, and promote life-long health, require early identification and effective interventions routed in geographic, cultural, social, linguistic and educational contexts. Understanding this complexity requires expertise from many disciplines.

The aim of the Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development (IHD) is to develop new interconnections that cut across disciplinary and professional boundaries to build evidence and understanding for the improvement of young lives and the promotion of human development in the real world. The IHD will contribute to improved human health, learning, social and emotional functioning, including effective approaches to prevention, early identification and intervention to maintain and promote health and wellbeing over the life course. The IHD is unique in building integrative research and educational programs across university divisions and affiliated institutions that include international leaders in health, education, social welfare and basic sciences.

IHD members across the University of Toronto collaborate in teams that use a multi-faceted approach to identify the mechanisms underlying human development trajectories and use these discoveries to improve learning, health, and society. Research questions, informed by societal needs, will focus on the interactions between genes and the natural, social, and cultural environments to determine developmental trajectories, and how those trajectories are modified and contribute to major disorders such as childhood obesity and developmental difficulties in cognitive, emotional and social functioning. Discovery science interacting with human subject research will ultimately result in new diagnostic and interventional approaches, as well as prevention and promotion approaches, including effective education models and improved treatment support for physical, social and mental health.

Knowledge from this research will be mobilized and impact measured by tracking the application of new knowledge in the health care and education as well as in innovative public policy that will drive change toward improved health and learning. Through its novel collaborative education programs, the IHD will prepare the next generation of researchers who will lead transdisciplinary teams that merge discovery and translational research while continuing to address complex questions relevant to human development.

Further Reading:

Unlocking Our Potential: U of T researchers suggest life’s early years might be even more important than we thought.
By Alison Motluk, UofT Magazine