The Kempe Graduate Summer Program in Child Abuse and Neglect There is a substantial paucity of research and research capacity in the field of child abuse and neglect (CA&N), a problem that impacts more than 3 million children each year in the US and an estimated 15% of the world?s children (about 285 million each year) around the globe To address this gap, we propose unique training for clinicians and for social science and public health researchers to stimulate new research in CA&N, with special focus on issues of disparities and prevention. Our training, to be led by seasoned researchers and educators at the Kempe Center and the Colorado School of Public Health, will be tailored to three specific audiences: clinicians familiar with CA&N diagnosis and treatment but lacking research training; social science and public health researchers unfamiliar with the problem of CA&N; and scholars seeking knowledge of the principles of designing and evaluating primary prevention projects. Throughout, we will give special emphasis to addressing issues of disparities and the complex legal and ethical elements of CA&N research. For all participants, we will facilitate trainees working on their own projects directly with successful investigators as part of an action learning approach. Training will begin by inviting applicants to propose a concept for a research project they hope to develop further during a one week graduate summer session, followed by individualized mentoring with a senior scholar. We propose four specific aims: 1) attract and prepare child abuse pediatrics fellows and other clinicians in advanced training to be able to conduct clinical epidemiology, health services, or population-based research addressing the screening, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of CA&N; 2) attract and prepare ethnically, disciplinary, and socially diverse graduate students and postdoctoral fellows already trained in the social sciences and/or public health research, but nave to the field of CA&N to explore and address critical issues with a special focus on unique legal and ethical issues of research in this field; 3) prepare clinicians, social scientists and public health professionals already trained in CA&N to address primary prevention and attend to the issues of disparities; and 4) build research collaborations among junior and senior clinicians, public health and social scientists. We will evaluate the success of the training through pre-training, immediate post-training, and longer term follow-up of trainees. We will assess: 1) success of recruitment into the program, with special emphasis on enrolling minority scholars; 2) perceived quality of the training experience; 3) changes in participants? confidence and intent to develop CA&N research; 4) participant satisfaction with each element of the training and suggested improvements; 5) participant research trajectories over a one year period through measures of continued contact with peers, instructors and mentors and documentation of the nature of research initiated, proposed for funding, funded and/or completed. Results of the evaluation will enable continuous quality improvement of recruitment and training strategies.
Over 3 million families each year are reported to authorities for child abuse and neglect in the United States. Research efforts to understand, treat, and prevent this problem are seriously deficient. Among the limitations in this field is the dearth of established investigators who are able to teach about the issues of research in child abuse, submit substantive research proposals, or serve as reviewers on study sections. This R25 proposal is intended to expand the pool of scholars trained to conduct research in this field, expand prevention research, and ensure that clinicians working in this field have access to research training.
