Impact of adversity on early childhood growth & development in rural India: Findings from the early life stress sub-study of the SPRING cluster randomised controlled trial (SPRING-ELS).

Our results are the first from a large population-based study in a low/middle-income country to show that each increase in adversity in multiple domains increases risk to child growth and development at a very early age. There is an urgent need to act to improve these outcomes for young children in LMICs and these findings suggest that Early Childhood programmes should prioritise early childhood adversity because of its impact on developmental inequities from the very start.