The candidate is a Pediatrician with an MPH in maternal and child health. She is an attending physician in clinics for follow-up of high-risk children and child development. She has begun scientific work and established relationships related to her special interests on understanding the impact of pregnancy-related and perinatal events on the long-term outcome for child growth and development. Her immediate goals are to develop a systematic program of research on the long-term outcomes of low birth weight infants, by increasing her knowledge of assessments of neurodevelopment of children and adolescents at risk, and by obtaining more training in statistical analysis of large databases and growth curve analysis. This knowledge will assist her to develop her ability to design and conduct multi-center clinical trials, to manage large databases and to design useful research outcome measurements for evaluating developmental outcomes in large populations. She describes a didactic curriculum and specific consultations to achieve this knowledge. Within the multidisciplinary infrastructure, existing at UAB she will work in particular with the Civitan International Research Center, a center specialized in development and outcome assessments of children. She will be working with several senior faculty experts in her area of research. The proposed project is a prospective longitudinal study that will assess the long-term outcomes of preterm children who participated in the Successive Small for Gestational Age (SGA) Study, an NICHD sponsored study, that recruited multiparous low-income pregnant women at risk for Intrauterine Growth Retardation (IUGR) from a single county. These women and their infants were followed antenatally, at birth and at 1 and 5 years of age. The overall hypothesis of this proposed study is that growth and development of preterm SGA adolescents will be impaired compared to preterm Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA) children. Growth and developmental outcomes will correlate with prenatal and perinatal variables after controlling for postnatal variables.The study will include 99 preterm (<37 weeks gestation) SGA and 121 preterm AGA children who were born between 1986 and 1988. These children will be 11 to 13 years at the time of the assessments. All participants will be assessed for growth using anthropometric measures, development of skeletal mass, body composition (dual energy X-Ray absorptiometry and bone age), and sexual maturation. Developmental assessment will include assessing academic achievement, cognitive scores, assessment of learning disabilities, behavioral and functional outcome instruments. This study should provide important information to understand the longterm outcomes for children who were born after IUGR and its relationship with prenatal and perinatal events.
