**5. Conclusions**

One of the major characteristics of the EDI that lends itself well towards the populationwide studies reviewed in this paper is its holistic nature. Research demonstrates that the EDI is an effective tool for monitoring children's developmental health, both in typically developing children and those with health disorders. Thus far, the research using the EDI

has contributed to the expansion of our knowledge on the associations between SDOH and children's developmental health, and mostly through linkages with other databases has opened many possibilities for further investigation of early childhood development.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.J. and M.G.; writing—original draft preparation, N.R., C.R.-W., M.J., and B.F.; writing—review and editing, N.R., C.R.-W., M.J., B.F., and M.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the late Dan Offord, Clyde Hertzman, and Fraser Mustard to the development of the idea of population-level measures of early child development in service of improving the odds for optimal development of all children.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
