The Oregon Legislature adjourned on June 27 without bringing the Child Success Act (SB 1167) forward for a vote. This legislation, which enjoyed strong bipartisan support, would have funded seven locally designed and locally directed Demonstration Pilots to show the value of primary prevention through investments in the first 1,000 days of life, from conception to age 2, when 80% of brain development in children takes place.
Why is this important? It’s important because we know that the seeds that undermine the success of our children are planted very early, even before birth. The science of brain development in children tells us that poor nutrition and maternal stress—both before conception and during pregnancy—can alter genetic expression in the unborn child, dramatically increasing the risk of poor cognitive functions, learning disabilities, mental health and substance use disorders and early adult onset of many chronic illnesses.
The failure to invest in the 1,000 days of life—the period where we can have the greatest impact on reducing cognitive dysfunction, learning disabilities, and many chronic illnesses—will result in preventable suffering, the unnecessary loss of human potential, and huge downstream costs in both health care and education.
Yes, the legislature was facing a challenging economic environment, but a decision not to invest in primary prevention, will cost the state far more in future biennia. In times of fiscal limits and uncertainty at the federal level, it is more important than ever to invest upstream in primary prevention.
Addressing homelessness, and Oregon’s behavioral health and addiction crisis, are top priorities for both the governor and the legislature. Yet, we cannot possibly be successful if we focus only on the backend. We know that childhood trauma is one of the leading causes of developing addiction later in life. We know that people who experience trauma as children are more likely to become homeless as adults. And we know that substance use disorders cost our state $6 billion a year and we spend another $840 million a year on mental health disorders.
In short, investing in early childhood to prevent trauma and adverse experience is not only a moral imperative, it is an economic imperative as well. And without doing so we will ultimately be unable to afford the cost of effectively addressing either our housing shortage or our deepening crisis in behavioral health and addiction.
Notwithstanding this setback, the work of the First 1,000 Days Upstream Initiative will continue. The Oregon Health and Education, Collaborative – which sponsored the Initiative—and the seven communities that invested so much time and energy in developing these Demonstration Pilots, will continue to refine and advance this work.
The state cannot afford to continue to ignore primary prevention. Nor can the 38,000 babies born each year in Oregon – many into stressful circumstances that can undermine their health, and their long-term social and economic success. We remain committed to our North Star: Making Oregon the first state in the nation where every pregnant woman knows where to go in her community to access everything she and her family needs to ensure that her child will be healthy and successful in the first thousand days life.
Childhood poverty—which is what we are really talking about here—is not the result of an Act of God. It is a policy choice, and it is imperative that we start making different choices and pursuing different policies. If we are serious about doing so, if we were serious about giving all our children the fair shot in life that we say that deserve—then we must be vocal and aggressive in making sure that this goal is reflected in our policies and in our budgets. Which is not the case today, which was not the case in the 2025 session of the Oregon Legislature.
The fact is, that very young children and their families are an afterthought in Oregon. We all say the right words — “We must put children first” …” Children are our future.” But these platitudes are not reflected in our policy and budget priorities. From the standpoint of the legislative budget process, children are invisible… until they’re not. Children are inexpensive…until they are very expensive.
Legislatures fund acute crises, over investments that could prevent those crises in the first place. They listen to the loud, powerful voices of the education lobby and the health care lobby—over the faint voices of thousands of very young Oregon children, whose future is being unnecessarily compromised. This is not meant to be an indictment of either education or health care – but, rather, a clear eye recognition of the fact that much of the cost in both our health care and education systems is driven by our failure to make these early investments.
This is what Robert Kennedy referred to as the “violence of institutions,” in his speech to the City Club of Cleveland April 5, 1968, the day after Dr. King was assassinated.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
The echo of those words reaches out to us across the dusty years of half a century—because, in a real sense, it is the violence of institutions that we must overcome. We must find the courage to prevent suffering and injustice, rather than just addressing its long-term consequences. We must—and I am confident that we will—find the wisdom and the resolve to break down bureaucracies, to transcend partisanship, to move beyond organizations to outcomes, and, in so doing, to fulfill the responsibility we owe to our children, to the next generation and to the future.
