Early childhood is a time of profound growth and development and early experiences during this period have important implications for life-long health and development. Evidence for the benefit of investing in early childhood is so strong that it is considered a public health issue by many researchers and policymakers. This chapter explores efforts within Cooperative Extension in fostering health and well-being among young children, suggesting a holistic approach that involves supporting children’s parents and caregivers, early childhood educators, and fostering a positive context in which children can thrive. Extension continues to play important roles in providing culturally responsive education to families, working with families to cocreate knowledge, and assisting communities in supporting the well-being of young children for lifelong success. Specific examples of promising programs are provided to highlight the impactful work conducted by Extension to support young children around the country.

The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the Food, Nutrition and Health (FNH) focus area within the Cooperative Extension Service (CES), which includes discussing influential policy and legislation, demonstrating how this focus area has developed and evolved over time, and commenting on potential future directions. This chapter begins by providing information about US Federal legislation that established the CES, as well as other influential laws and policies that have impacted how it operates today. The discussion then moves to how the overarching vision, mission, and goals of FNH programming have remained constant over time, yet, how efforts, audiences, demographics, and methods of engagement have evolved. Such shifts have emerged alongside advancing research, evaluation tools, national guidelines and recommendations, and technology; and as FNH CES adapted to meet the changing needs of clientele. Changes in FNH CES programming also resulted from efforts to be more inclusive and equitable for audiences. Recommendations for future directions in light of current trends and projections in the field of FNH are provided.

This chapter addresses the critical question of how the Cooperative Extension System prepares the next generation of Extension professionals who will support the well-being of tomorrow’s children, youth, and families. This chapter details the career landscape of Extension in five parts. Part 1 presents a synopsis of career development research highlighting how a person identifies and advances in a career as well as different Extension careers to demonstrate the multiple career pathways and roles in Extension organizations. Part 2 provides a discussion of competencies and skills needed for successful Extension professionals. Parts 3, 4, and 5 explore each of the primary mechanisms for preparing the next generation of Extension professionals, including formal instruction through college programs, career development activities (e.g., internships); and education that occurs on or after hiring (e.g., onboarding, continuing professional development). Information from this chapter can help guide those interested in pursuing Extension careers, as well as those in leadership positions who oversee hiring and retaining talent for Extension.

Rural communities. Rural families. Both face challenges and opportunities for viability and security. The Rural Families Speak Project has been studying rural families with low incomes for over twenty years, listening to the voices of families and sharing their stories of challenges as well as resiliency with policymakers and community educators. Select findings of this rich body of work focused on four domains – food insecurity, economic security, health, and family well-being – and are shared in this chapter along with implications and recommendations for community outreach and education. In particular, the roles that Extension can play in serving rural communities and families are presented. This chapter illustrates the translational linkage between research and Extension work highlighting the importance of integrating research and practice.

Extension’s charge has long been to extend research, information, and innovative strategies and programs from Land Grant University and research centers. Extension is working in an era of digital communication where social media is evidencing extraordinary growth. Most adults in the United States now report accessing information from social media platforms. As such the use of social media and technology in Extension is rapidly becoming a necessity. As Extension has served as a trusted source of information for over a century, it is currently facing a time of transition to explore how to effectively use technology to reach audiences. This chapter explores current trends in digital communication and highlights the ways that Extension can create and deliver information using social media. We propose intentionality in strategies and factors to consider when engaging via social media. Finally, we pose questions regarding Extension’s continued relevance and possibly changing role in considering the rapidly shifting information landscape.

Extension’s commitment to improving the quality of life through nonformal education remains apparent across the rural–urban continuum. While urban, suburban, and rural communities share common issues such as food access and health disparities, addressing concerns of well-being in urban areas requires approaches that recognize the scale, diversity, complexity, and urban–rural interface of metropolitan areas. This chapter provides an overview of Extension’s strategy in metropolitan areas. It describes and discusses the National Urban Extension Leaders (NUEL) network, which is a steering council developed to guide Extension’s approach to urban programming. NUEL’s focus areas include improving our health, enriching youth, feeding the future, strengthening communities, and protecting the environment. Using a case study approach, the chapter then includes examples of Extension programs across the country that address issues relevant to urban populations. The chapter concludes with insights from earlier programming and scholarship, and provides recommendations based on a synthesis of common threads and unique considerations in urban programming.

Entrepreneurship can have transformative impacts that benefit rural areas and uplift underserved communities. In higher education, entrepreneurship instruction has grown over the last half century but is in its nascent stage in nonformal youth development settings. This chapter highlights the value of Extension youth entrepreneurship education programs that are contextualized, account for the audience’s unique needs and available resources, are designed with clear program goals to frame effective delivery and evaluation, and that build capacity for sustainable programmatic implementation. We further propose that Extension can draw from and capitalize on the current literature on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education for best practices in program development. Finally, we describe UpStarts, an entrepreneurship program that is intended to support positive socio-cognitive outcomes (e.g., entrepreneurial mindsets) and foster social connections among youth in rural communities. Implications focus on the role of Extension in translating research to effective practices to support youth entrepreneurship education in the communities.

The overarching purpose of Extension is to facilitate the application of science to the broader public. To achieve this goal, the information we disseminate must be accurate, relevant, socially just, and beneficial, which requires rigorous evaluation to ensure (Braverman & Arnold, 2008; Monk et al., 2021). In this chapter, I demonstrate the complementarity of Extension and the process of research and evaluation by outlining the relevance of Extension as a (a) research-informed, (b) evidence-based, (c) culturally relevant, (d) interdisciplinary, and (e) public-scholarship enterprise. To illustrate each of these qualities of Extension, I will describe the ongoing development of a relationship-science dissemination program, Relevate. In its over 100 years of existence, Extension has been at the forefront of community-engaged, translational and transformative scholarship. The landscape of Extension has changed over time. However, shifts and challenges in engagement work can also represent new opportunities to be responsive and innovative. Extension is well positioned to continue carrying bringing research to the community and conducting impactful, innovative, and engaged scholarship.

The family is a critical context for youth development. Whether it is through neighborhood, school, or activities, families are critical to determining which spaces youth are accessing and in which spaces they are learning. Some of these determinations are intentional, such as when a parent registers a child to participate in an activity; other determinations are unintentional, such as a neighborhood highway prevents a child from getting to an afterschool activity. Families are also responsible for the more mundane aspects of youth programs such as cost, transportation, and scheduling. Extension is uniquely positioned to support the health and well-being of youth, and in helping meet various challenges through family engagement. Extension has talented staff with skills and expertise in building community partnerships, working within and on behalf of families and communities, and working in partnership with youth, families, and communities to develop new ways of working. This chapter explores ways in which Extension has promoted positive youth development through family engagement and offers new ways of thinking about how Extension might do this work differently going forward.

As the largest publicly funded, nonformal education system in the United States, Cooperative Extension (a.k.a. “Extension”) has played a critical role in how technologies and innovations generated through state agricultural experiment stations (AES) and land-grant universities (LGUs) in the United States have been translated and shared directly to its constituents for over a century. Extension has served as a unique and robust system to collaborate, generate, and disseminate research, as well as to engage in mission-oriented work to support communities in optimizing their current and future circumstances and through collaborative partnerships shaping the ways in which we cultivate and preserve food, how we educate and care for our children, manage our finances, work with communities, and support populations disproportionality affected by structural inequities. The current volume brings together leading scholars to discuss Extension’s contributions to the well-being of children, youth, families, and communities; and to critically reflect on Extension’s future directions in light of significant shifts in the context in which it now operates.

4-H, which is the largest youth organization in the country, has evolved over time. Historically, there has been a disconnect between university-based researchers and practitioners who implement 4-H programs in the field. In part because of this mismatch and because there has been a focus on subject matter content, 4-H as an organization has struggled with articulating the theory of change that underlies its programming. Recent developments in understanding the science of learning and development and recent efforts to translate positive youth development research into practice are promising. Based at land-grant universities, 4-H is well positioned to capitalize on these developments and intentionally apply them in practice. This chapter highlights 4-H programming examples to illustrate developmental principles and concludes with next steps to address challenges and increase alignment with developmental science.

The Cooperative Extension System plays a critical role in the tripartite mission of the land-grant university system – serving as a means of disseminating research findings generated in universities and research centers for the direct benefit of people of the community in which it is embedded. Rooted in agricultural education and initially focused on supporting well-being among residents of rural communities, Extension has evolved to address the needs among the country’s changing demographic. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of demographic changes that have had important implications for Extension programming; describe examples of federal, state, and regional initiatives that address new challenges and meet the needs of a rapidly diversifying audience base; as well as highlight current gaps and areas that need further attention. We end the chapter by proposing future directions in Extension programming to better address the needs of diverse populations.

Extension is uniquely positioned to reach and support underserved and underrepresented families. Although Extension excels at providing evidence-based programming for mothers, children, and youth, it has generally been less successful in engaging fathers. Recent evidence finds increased balanced sharing of caregiving responsibilities and fathers’ desire to engage with their children. Engaging fathers and incorporating father-centric programming is more important than ever. This chapter will highlight promising strategies for engaging fathers in Extension, including an example of a statewide needs assessment, technology-based programming, and community-based partnerships. We describe available evidence-based programs and approaches, both currently utilized with fathers and aptly positioned to accommodate fathers, along with promising opportunities and important considerations for Extension moving forward. Shifting the focus to better serve fathers in family-based programming will better engage and support underserved and vulnerable families, and Extension is a system that is critically important for meeting this challenge.