Laurel Raffington

Research Focus

Laurel Raffington’s research aims to uncover how early life interventions impact children’s lifespan learning and development by using novel epigenetic biomarkers. Traditional methods often fail to capture these effects in realtime, despite evidence of significant long-term benefits. By analyzing DNA methylation patterns, her work has shown that children from under-resourced families exhibit epigenetic signs of lower cognitive performance and faster aging. Raffington plans to integrate these biomarkers into randomized controlled trials, focusing on early cash transfers, parental, and child well-being treatments. Her goal is to develop real-time measures of intervention efficacy, ultimately improving educational policies and child well-being.

My plans for the fellowship period

My research aims to reveal “sleeper” intervention effects on children’s learning using novel epigenetic biomarkers that capture cellular-level changes. Childhood interventions often have delayed effects on life outcomes, indicating that learning occurs but isn’t captured by standard tools. Real-time evaluation of long-term effects could revolutionize intervention design and efficacy. My future research will integrate epigenetics into randomized controlled trials aimed at improving child well-being. The epigenome, which turns genes off and on, can be thought of as our malleable cellular memory system that can store information over a lifetime. Because epigenetic marks are like cellular memories, interventions that have measurable epigenetic effects may have more lasting positive effects. I will probe whether existing epigenetic scores quantifying adult outcomes, and newly generated epigenetic scores of learning variability can be used as surrogate end points to help us rapidly evaluate the long-term effects of education policy and practice. Critically, we will focus on epigenetic biomarkers in socio-demographically diverse child cohorts using saliva, which is easily attainable in pediatric cohorts and field collections.

How will my work change children’s and youth’s lives?

My research aims to make a significant difference in the lives of children by improving how we design and evaluate child education policy and practice. First, I will identify biomarkers that can help make educational programs more effective and beneficial over the long term. Second, my work will potentially uncover hidden biological factors that affect how children learn, even if these factors don’t show up in their performance on behavioral tasks. This is especially important for young children. Third, I will emphasize how crucial a child’s environment is for their cognitive development and overall health throughout their life. Lastly, I will frame child learning and development as context-specific biological adaptations that are unique to each child’s biological makeup and surroundings. Epigenetic modifications are cellular memory systems, thus, interventions that leave epigenetic marks are more likely to result in long-lasting benefits.