MCHB EPI Atlanta Conference
December 5 - 7, 2006
You've Got to Accentuate the Positive:
Research on Protective Factors for Child Well-Being
MICHAEL KOGAN: Well, good morning everyone. I’m Michael Kogan from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau and HRSA. And behalf of them, I like to officially welcome you to the 12th Annual MCH Epidemiology Conference. I’d like to welcome you to the opening plenary session today entitled “You’ve Got to Accentuate the Positive: Research on Protective Factors for Child Well-being.”
In this field, we’re entrusted with the task of helping to maximize the chances that children will lead healthy lives. By necessity and design, we study why certain children aren’t healthy, and look for risk factors that can provide the knowledge and information to assist parents, schools, and communities. We then designed programs to communicate this information. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat too much, don’t eat too much candy unless it’s dark chocolate, don’t play with guns, don’t ride a bike without your helmet, don’t cross your eyes, they’ll freeze that way. Don’t, don’t, don’t. They’re all important messages but a relentless stream of negativity.
Actually it reminds me of my childhood now that I think about it. Actually, now that I think about it more, “Is there an emergency therapist in the house?” But what about the kids who do well? What about the children who do well despite being in tough circumstances? Why do they do well? This plenary session is dedicated to looking at children’s health from the other side. What are the protective factors associated with positive youth development?
We have a truly distinguished group of speakers this morning from different disciplines. Our first speaker is Dr. Kris Moore. Dr. Moore is a social psychologist and senior scholar of Child Trends. She’s been with Child Trends since 1982 studying trends in child and family well being. She heads Child Trends’ new initiative on research results, which focuses on bringing research findings to policymakers and program providers. She’s published more than 100 articles and books and has been working to conceptualize and measure positive outcomes for children and youth. Dr. Moore received the 1999 Foundation for Child Development’s Centennial Award for linking research on children’s development to policies that serve the public interest and the 2002 Society for Adolescent Medicine Visiting Professor in Adolescent Research Award and was co-winner of the 2005 American Sociological Association Section on Children and Youth and Distinguished Contribution Award.
Our next speaker is Dr. Claire Brindis. She’s a professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy, the Department of Pediatrics and the Division of Adolescent Medicine and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Health Services at the University of California, San Francisco. She’s executive director of the National Adolescent Health and Information Center, and associate director of the Policy Information Analysis Center for Middle Childhood and Adolescents. That must be some business card you have by the way. She’s also the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Policy, Research and Policy in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Services. Her research focuses on adolescent and child health policy, adolescent health and risk behaviors. And she’s a winner of the MacQueen Award by the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs.
Our next speaker will be Dr. Jacky Eccles. She’s the McKeachie Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She served as president, council member and journal editor of the Journal Research on Adolescence for a Society for Research on Adolescence. She was the chair of the National Academy of Science Committee on After-School Programs for youth. Her awards include the Spencer Foundation Fellowship for Outstanding Young Scholars in Educational Research, the APS Cattell Fellows Award for Outstanding Applied Work in Psychology, the APA Division 14th *Thorndike Award for Distinguished Lifetime Research, and the APA Division 7 Outstanding Mentor Award. She’s conducted research on topics ranging from gender role socialization, classroom influences on motivation to socio development in the family, school, peer, and wider cultural context.
She’ll be followed by Dr. Lisa Youngblade. She’s professor and department head in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University. Her areas of specialization include child and adolescent, socio-emotional development especially in the context of family and peer relations, healthcare access for vulnerable youth such as children with special healthcare needs in adolescence. A significant focus of Dr. Youngblade’s work is related to identifying protective factors in systems that care for children that promote positive development outcomes. She’s published over 40 peer-reviewed papers and co-authored a book on the effects of maternal employment on children’s well being. She’s a past co-editor of the journal of family relations and is currently on the editorial board of Developmental Psychology.
We’re going to have a discussant. Our original discussant, Dr. Ed Shore from the Commonwealth Fund had a sudden emergency on his way down here and couldn’t make it. Dr. Wanda Barfield has been kind enough and was my first choice to step in as a discussant. She’s a medical epidemiologist and senior scientist in Applied Research Applied Sciences Branch for Division of Reproductive Health at CDC. She was a recent MCH EPI assignee in Massachusetts. Dr. Barfield has researched disparities in realization of early intervention services using a longitude database called Lapel. She’s also a pediatrician and neonatologist interested of reducing disparities in feto-infant outcomes.
And with that, I would like to introduce Dr. Kris Moore.