Improving developmental outcomes in children
Dr Michelle Fernandes is leading research that is democratising how the medical community understands and supports early childhood development. She is a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College and principal investigator of First 1000 (F1000) research group at the Oxford University Department of Paediatrics, in addition to being a clinical neonatologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Michelle’s research group F1000 investigates brain development from conception to two years old, a critical period for cognitive, motor, and behavioural growth. Her pioneering work in rapid, standardised neurodevelopmental assessment (INTER-NDA) has now been applied to over 40,000 children in 26 countries, with 350–400 assessors trained globally. Her work is rooted in a commitment to equity in health and education and is delivering tangible impact in some of the world’s most marginalised communities.
In 2020, Michelle led the construction of the first and currently only international standards of early child development constructed according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) prescriptive methodology. Recently, she has extended the INTER-NDA to young age groups by developing developmental assessments for infants and newborns (the Oxford Neurodevelopmental Assessment and the Neonatal Neurobehavioral Assessment, respectively).
Uprooting severe cognitive delay in vulnerable children
The F1000 group’s latest findings come from the Omama Project, based in Eastern Slovakia. This is a ground-breaking community-based intervention designed to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes for Roma children living in extreme poverty.
The initiative, delivered by trained Roma women known as Omamas, provides weekly home-based sessions focused on early childhood stimulation – play, reading, music, and responsive caregiving -all in the local Romani dialect to children aged 6 weeks to 20 months. These culturally relevant interventions have demonstrated significant improvements in cognition, language, and motor skills, reducing the likelihood of cognitive delay by 88%.
Although the Roma children participating in this study were subject to the ‘triple threat’ of poverty, undernutrition and developmental delay, the intervention focussed on early childhood development only and did not include interventions for malnutrition or poverty. Despite this, the Omama project showed that Roma children receiving the intervention had significantly better outcomes than children in the community who did not.
The project’s findings highlight an essential link between early childhood interventions and broader health factors, such as linear growth at 24 months, reinforcing the need for integrated approaches to nutrition and development.
Green Templeton as a global leadership hub for maternal and child health research
Michelle’s work is closely tied to college, which provides a collaborative environment for knowledge exchange, interdisciplinary research, and policy impact. She is Director of Early Brain Science at the Oxford Maternal & Perinatal Health Institute (OMPHI), homed at college and affiliated with the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health.
‘OMPHI has produced over 400 publications, supporting numerous DPhil and Master’s students at Green Templeton, many of whom have contributed to this research. The Institute was founded by Professor Stephen Kennedy who at the time was part of the college’s governing body and a driving force for this. Therefore, the college has really been an incubator for academic excellence and practice’ explained Michelle.
Global impact
Green Templeton College is committed to advancing global knowledge exchange in maternal and perinatal health, early childhood development, and beyond. The college’s strategic vision includes strengthening academic centres of excellence and expanding initiatives that drive policy and practice improvements worldwide, such as exploring a Global Centre of Philanthropy, which Michelle is also involved in.
OMPHI already provides free mentorship to the Women in Science programme, and is actively looking to build on this by hosting a lecture series at Green Templeton. Michelle’s research continues to grow, with projects including the development of a risk estimator for neonatal brain development spanning 13 countries – a major step in improving early-life health interventions worldwide.
In addition, the F1000 research group at Oxford and Michelle’s dedicated network of international collaborators have been developing centres of excellence regionally to drive research, capacity building and advocacy in early child development across the world – such ‘Centres of Child Neurodevelopment have already been established in the Caribbean (Grenada), East Africa (Kenya), and West Africa (Nigeria).
To scale up her efforts in enabling every child to achieve their full developmental potential by the end of the first 1000 days of life, Michelle is seeking donors, collaborators, and institutional partners who share the college’s vision for a world where early childhood health is not determined by socioeconomic background.
Be a catalyst for change and knowledge exchange
The college is actively seeking donors and partners to help grow its knowledge exchange centres and expand initiatives such as the Women in Science mentorship programme. Future plans include hosing even more activities at Green Templeton, further cementing its role as a centre for academic discussion and impact.
By supporting Green Templeton College and initiatives like the Omama Project, you can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of maternal and child health, early childhood development, and global health equity.
To learn more about how you can contribute, visit the college’s giving pages.
More about Dr Michelle Fernandes
Michelle serves as a scientific advisor to the WHO’s Global Scales of Early Development Initiative and to NeoTRIPS UK. She has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications, and three novel early child developmental toolkits, including the INTER-NDA toolkit for which she was highly commended by at the MRC’s Impact Awards Ceremony in 2024. She holds numerous research awards from the MRC, NIHR, NIH, and Gates Foundation among others.
Visit Dr Michelle Fernandes’ profile
The paper, ‘A community-based intervention (the Omama Project) improves neurodevelopment in impoverished 2-year-old Roma children: a quasi-experimental observational study‘, is published in the European Journal of Paediatrics.
