Årets Pris 2016. Tale af Prismodtager og Brugertale
Speach by Professor James Heckman
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Speach by Health Nurse Pernille Almdal
It is a great pleasure to be here for the presentation of your well-deserved and prestigious award from the Foundation 'A good start in life'.
It is an honor to meet you as you have inspired me by your research for years and I have to the best of my abilities always tried to transfer your research into real life practice.
As a start, I would like to bring you greetings from our partners, both nationally and internationally. We have all found a great inspiration in the knowledge you have shared with us and how you have managed to transfer it into the understandable early child development curve. From all of us - a BIG thank you!
As everybody knows, you are an awarded Nobel Prize winner and a highly respected professor. Personally, I find you an exceptional pioneer and a huge inspiration for all of us working with the daily challenges of providing timely investments and efforts to not only the newborns and their families, but from the early start of the most important and precious time we have – during pregnancy.
With your research, you have successfully managed to bridge the gap between research and practice. This is precisely the art that inspires us – carefully balancing growth between nationally and globally, with a turnover of theory to practice, close to the individual citizen - the pregnant, the baby and the new family. With a simple model to all of us who are neither scientist nor economist, which we can relate to, understand and put into practice.
With my knowledge of your research and your simple illustration through your world famous curve, you have clearly illustrated that by investing in our children. If we continue to develop and maintain the effort, we all benefit and win. Wins that goes far beyond a socioeconomic benefit alone, has human potential, which greatly also leads to increased quality of life for the individual child and their families.
In your research have you managed to create a solid foundation for the development of a solid bridge between sectors and professions, which are so extremely important and vital for the individual child and its family, so each child gets a good start in life , and experience a safety throughout its childhood.
Based on your research, we have in Denmark, developed a highly sought combined birth and parent preparation course offered to all families expecting a child. The course starts during the pregnancy and continues until the child is one and half year old.
The course involves both parents from the beginning, as we know that the parents are the most important resources any child have in life. The approach also helps us break the social inheritance of vulnerable families.
We have an obligation to ensure that all children get the best possible start in life and that all children have the same opportunities to begin with. Your research provides the basis for this and proofs that diversity can be huge strength, both among us professionals and the families.
We best achieve a strengthening of parenthood for all new parents, by working holistically and across academic boundaries and sectors - with the close involvement of families, alongside the public and private sector, and with the involvement of the many voluntary organizations out there.
With these words, I wish you a great and heartfelt congratulation on your highly deserved award - and I will continue to follow your research in the years to come.