Our Story

Our community is part of a national Basics Learning Network of communities, all dedicated to The Basics vision. The network is led by The Basics, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Boston, where the movement began.

Our Vision:

The Basics Vision is a Cincinnati where infants, toddlers, and preschoolers of all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds are on track to achieve their full potential--having benefited from early experiences that foster healthy brain development, learning, joy, and resilience.

Our Mission:

The Basics Mission is to pursue both equity and excellence, by building community capacity to engage and support parents and other caregivers of young children in their roles as the most important influences in their children's lives.

National History

The Basics movement began because of three research-based facts:

  1. Early childhood experiences have long-term impacts on brain architecture, kindergarten readiness, and lifetime success.

  2. Cognitive skill gaps between children from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds are clear in national data long before kindergarten, by the age of two.

  3. Research on the science of early development provides strong guidance regarding what children need to experience in order to thrive, instead of falling behind early.




Founder Dr. Ron Ferguson was the faculty director of the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University, when he first noticed in the national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Birth Cohort) that cognitive skill gaps between children of different racial, ethnic, and parental-education groups were very apparent by twenty-four months. He began exploring how to contribute to the large body of work that was already underway to support early learning and brain development, but he wanted to scale across whole communities to reach every child, starting at birth.

The AGI convened a national conference and science advisory committee to formulate five tenets of caregiving practice, now called The Basics Principles, around which to organize The Basics movement. The aim was socioecological saturation, meaning to infuse multiple settings in communities with information, social reinforcements, and regular reminders regarding the benefits of using The Basics Principles routinely in early childhood parenting/caregiving.

The AGI and The Black Philanthropy Fund (an organization of African Americans in Boston) formally launched The Basics movement in Boston in September of 2016 to help prepare children from all backgrounds and across whole neighborhoods to thrive, starting at birth.

The word spread quickly. By December, teams from 11 cities convened in Boston to learn about The Principles, the tools, and the approach. Rather than wait years for Boston to refine the approach, attendees agreed, “We'll figure it out together.” The Basics Learning Network (BLN) was thereby born. It operates under the leadership of The Basics, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization under the fiscal sponsorship of Third Sector New England (TSNE).

Today, coalitions across dozens of BLN cities, towns, and counties in the US, Brazil, and Australia are engaging their communities, participating in BLN research, and regularly convening to learn, innovate, and share best practices.

Cincinnati History

In 2011, Dr. Robert Ammerman, Scientific Director of Every Child Succeeds, was invited to speak at a Harvard University conference hosted by Dr. Ron Ferguson. The event, titled “Sharing Knowledge to Enable Effective Parenting: Messages and Mechanisms from Research and Practice,” became the spark that ignited The Basics movement. As Dr. Ferguson has shared, it was during that gathering that the vision for The Basics was born.

While the model began taking root in Boston, Cincinnati continued to grow its own network of early childhood supports. From 2020 to 2023, a group of early childhood organizations in our community formed an Early Childhood Quality Improvement Network focused on improving enrollment processes for families across programs serving low-income infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. After three years of collaboration and measurable success, the network began asking: What’s next?

When we posed that question to our partners, the answer was loud and clear. Nearly every provider reported seeing an increase in developmental delays and behavior challenges among children entering their programs—greater than anything they had experienced in the past. We were seeing the same challenges in pediatric practices and in the local kindergarten programs. While many preschool programs were already addressing these issues individually, there was a desire to come together as a system to support families before children reached preschool age.

We decided, as a network, to focus upstream—on the birth-to-three window—where we could collectively support families in building strong developmental foundations. What we needed was a simple, unifying approach to help parents support their children’s growth right from the start.

That’s when Dr. Ammerman reintroduced The Basics. Our team saw the potential. The five principles were simple, powerful, and easy for families to integrate into their daily routines. Just as importantly, they offered a shared language that could unify our community and reinforce key messages no matter where families turned for support.

At the same time, Cincinnati’s early childhood work was continuing to evolve. Efforts like Every Child Succeeds and the formation of All Children Thrive had already created strong cross-sector partnerships focused on early development and family well-being. But what was still missing was a universal, community-wide message that could reach all families with young children.

In 2023, the Fisher Center for Health Equity identified The Basics as a key strategy to fill that gap and began engaging local partners to bring the model to life in our region.

With that momentum, The Basics Cincinnati was officially launched—a movement to ensure every child in our community gets the strong start they deserve by making early brain development everyone’s business.