Who Are We?

We are an international network - a global community of practice - made up of practitioners and researchers, who work with newborn infants and their families in hospital, clinic and community settings around the world. We have been together as an informal community since 1985, when we first met at the Free University of Berlin. Inspired by the pioneering work of Berry Brazelton and the burgeoning research on early development, we were united - even then - by a desire to develop a more strength-based, family-centered approach to working with newborn infants and their families. This marked the beginning of an extraordinary multidisciplinary community of researchers and clinicians from across the globe, that today make up our network, Newborn Behavior International (NBI).  The goal of our NBI network is to consolidate these bonds by building up our community network around the world, so that we can better understand and support parents in the care of infants during these especially challenging times. 

Our philosophy: Because early experiences can either enhance or diminish innate potential, we believe that an understanding of the baby, of the baby’s behavior and a responsiveness to the baby’s developmental needs can be key elements in the support healthcare professionals can offer parents, at a time when the very bases for parental executive functioning are being established.  We have come to believe that the perinatal period may be the intervention point par excellence and that the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) and the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system are powerful strength-based clinical tools (and in the case of the NBAS, a research tool, also) that can enable healthcare professionals to work with new parents and their babies in order to strengthen families and communities.

An Invitation from Kevin Nugent and Lise Johnson

While the global threat of Coronavirus has pushed all of us to another level of anxiety and tension in our daily lives, a new spirit of community - ironically born through social and geographic distancing – reminds us that we belong to the same world. But, we also can see - with a deep sense of gratitude - that our international network has the capacity to sustain our collective bonds, through the thrilling and transformative force of love, collegiality and mutual support.  For all of us, who work with infants and their families, we now know that “all has changed, changed utterly” but we believe that there is the potential for a much better world after we get through this trauma. We also believe we can contribute to that new order. Supporting new parents and their babies while a pandemic encircles the globe is both daunting and challenging, and for that reason, we invite you to join us in our efforts to come up with solutions that combine compassion and creative pragmatism.

• We would therefore like to invite you to join our worldwide network, Newborn Behavior International (NBI). Please sign up (below), so that you can connect with colleagues from around the world and we, in turn, can stay in touch with you. The goal of the site is to promote diversity of all kinds, share experiences, offer support, create networks and webs of dialogue, interaction, and generative communication.  We want to establish open access to everyone in our network, so that we would also like to hear your stories about your work and give you the opportunity to link up with NBAS and NBO and infancy practitioners in other parts of the world.  We crave stories celebrating love and and the power of love to overcome adversity, so that we would like to use this site to encourage and inspire each other by our stories.

• We want to keep you informed about NBAS and NBO news, on-going research projects, training and mentoring initiatives in different regions and countries, but we also want to hear from you. We invite you to join us for our Leaders in the Field First Friday Webinar Series, featuring live ZOOM presentations by colleagues, whose ideas have shaped - and continue to shape - our field. We also invite you to share your clinical experiences by contributing to the Voices from the Field section, hosted by Aditi Subramaniam. We also have a Poetry and Practice section, hosted by Kevin Nugent, and we invite you to share poems that have influenced your practice.

• We are committed to the notion that that relationships represent the neural backbone of the NBI network. This is our challenge in the era of Coronavirus, COVID-19. Welcome and thanks!