Early childhood (birth–8 years), particularly the first 3 years, is the most critical time in development because of the highly sensitive developing brain. Providing appropriate developmental care (i.e., nurturing care, as defined by the World Health Organization [WHO]) during early childhood is key to ensuring a child's holistic development. Pediatricians are expected to play a critical role in supporting early childhood development (ECD) through providing developmental services such as developmental monitoring, anticipatory guidance, screening, and referral to medical and/or community-based services when delay is identified. Pediatricians are also expected to serve as advocates within their clinics and communities for improved delivery of ECD services, such as advocating for increasing funding for ECD initiatives, increasing insurance coverage of ECD services, and working to increase other pediatricians' awareness of the principles of ECD and how to deliver developmental services. However, this does not always occur. Typically, pediatricians' training and practice emphasizes treating disease rather than enhancing ECD. Pediatricians are further hindered by a lack of uniformity across nations in guidelines for developmental monitoring and screening. In this article, we present the vision of the International Pediatric Association (IPA) of the roles that pediatricians, academic departments, medical training programs, and pediatric associations should fulfill to help support ECD, including raising ECD to higher levels of priority in routine pediatric care. First, we present the challenges that face these goals in supporting ECD. We then propose, with supportive literature, strategies and resources to overcome these challenges in collaboration with local and international stakeholders, including the IPA, the WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank.

幼儿期（出生至 8 岁），尤其是头 3 年，是发育中最关键的时期，因为大脑正在发育中高度敏感。在幼儿期提供适当的发育护理（即世界卫生组织[WHO]定义的养育护理）是确保儿童全面发展的关键。儿科医生应通过提供发育监测、预期指导、筛查以及在发现延误时转介至医疗和/或社区服务等发育服务，在支持儿童早期发育 (ECD) 方面发挥关键作用。儿科医生还应在其诊所和社区内倡导改善 ECD 服务的提供，例如倡导增加 ECD 计划的资金、增加 ECD 服务的保险覆盖范围以及努力提高其他儿科医生对 ECD 原则的认识以及如何提供发展服务。然而，这种情况并不总是发生。通常，儿科医生的培训和实践强调治疗疾病而不是增强 ECD。各国发育监测和筛查指南缺乏统一，进一步阻碍了儿科医生的工作。在本文中，我们介绍了国际儿科协会 (IPA) 的愿景，即儿科医生、学术部门、医疗培训项目和儿科协会在帮助支持 ECD 方面应发挥的作用，包括将 ECD 提升到常规儿科的更高优先级关心。首先，我们提出了支持幼儿发展这些目标所面临的挑战。然后，我们利用支持性文献、战略和资源提出建议，与当地和国际利益相关者（包括 IPA、世界卫生组织、联合国儿童基金会和世界银行）合作克服这些挑战。