Low-birth-weight (LBW) premature infants are at high-risk for a multitude of physical and mental health adverse outcomes, including delays in neurological and cognitive development, attention deficit disorder, behavioral problems, and increased medical utilization. These morbidities of prematurity often persist into the school-age years and result in high costs for academic remediation, behavioral management, and family counseling. Parents of preterms also are at high-risk for adverse outcomes, including depression and anxiety disorders as well as dysfunctional parenting patterns. Therefore, there is an urgent need to test both the short- and long-term outcomes of theory-guided interventions with this high-risk population.
The specific aim of this supplemental proposal is to gain funding support for: 2 1/2 and 3 year old follow-up assessments of LBW premature infants and their parents who are currently enrolled in our NIH/NINR funded randomized clinical trial that is testing the effects of a theoretically driven reproducible intervention program (COPE= Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment) on child and parent outcomes, through 2 years corrected age; and a booster intervention at 2 1/2 years of age for half of the children and parents in our COPE experimental group in order to determine whether the effects of the COPE intervention can be enhanced during the pre-school years. Supplemental funding is critical at this stage of our research as 178 children will be 2 1/2 years of age and 132 children will turn 3 years by January of 2006, the end date for our currently funded clinical trial. Preliminary analysis of data from our current study indicates positive effects for the COPE program on key outcome variables and creates a compelling case for more long-term follow-up. ? ? ?
