Little attention has been given to the promotion and dissemination of effective childhood violence prevention for young (< 10 years of age) urban African American and Latino maltreated children raised in foster homes, despite the strong linkages between early childhood aggression and later youth violence. Promising findings with 128 biological and foster families in New York City demonstrated improvement in positive parenting, supportive co-parenting, and trends for lower child behavior problems for caregivers receiving a newly developed two-component (parenting and co-parenting) family intervention. Preliminary studies support the feasibility of training foster care staff in manualized interventions delivered in their agency, retaining families through the duration of the intervention, and obtaining high ratings of consumer satisfaction. The PI proposes to adapt, integrate, and experimentally evaluate a child-centered intervention of two existing, protocol-driven, empirically-supported child programs (The Dina Dinosaur's Curriculum for Young Children Social Skills and Problem Solving and the Kids Club: An Intervention Group for Children Exposed to Domestic Violence). The project will: (1) examine the short-term impact of the 12-week child intervention on the reduction of early physical aggression and its correlates (problems in social competence, emotional regulation, and social cognitions about violence) in the foster home, and classroom; and the reduction of foster placement instability; and (2) explore the impact of quality of implementation (dosage and adherence), and initial level of child aggression on intervention effects. Strong community networks are established with volunteering foster care agencies in New York City to accomplish the aims of this project. The sample consists of 102 foster children (ages 5-8 years) with substantiated neglect, exposure to domestic violence or physical abuse nested within six agencies. A randomized field trial will be used to assign children to the intervention (n=62) or a 'usual care' comparison (n=40) condition. Primary outcomes include measures of early physical aggression and behavior correlates, and the stability of the placement assessed by multiple agents (the child, foster parent, trained observer, and teacher) and across settings (foster home, classroom) at pre-test, post-test, and 3 months follow-up.
| Linares, Lourdes Oriana; Shankar, Viswanathan; Diaz, Angela et al. (2015) Association Between Cumulative Psychosocial Risk and Cervical Human Papillomavirus Infection Among Female Adolescents in a Free Vaccination Program. J Dev Behav Pediatr 36:620-7 |
