News Archive
April 24, 2024
Racial disparities continue to exist in autism research, negatively impacting Black autistic children. They are misdiagnosed, receive access to inferior quality services, and are almost twice as likely as white autistic children to have a co-occurring intellectual disability. To examine this void, the National Institute of Mental Health funded the "Racism and Resilience among Black Autistic Children and Caregivers" project.
April 22, 2024
We are pleased to announce that Brian Boyd has been appointed permanent director of the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). “We are grateful for Brian’s interim leadership,” says Penny Gordon-Larsen, Vice Chancellor for Research, “and excited to continue working with him in this critical role.”
April 17, 2024
The proportion of females diagnosed with autism in the state of North Carolina has increased steadily over a 20-year period, which likely reflects greater societal knowledge of how autism may manifest differently in females. This is a key finding of a recent report, “Are the diagnostic rates of autistic females increasing? An examination of state-wide trends,” published online in January 2024 in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
April 15, 2024
Congratulations to FPG Faculty Fellow and Founding Director of FPG's Equity Research Action Coalition Iheoma Iruka, PhD, Danielle Allen, PhD, a project director at the Coalition and TK Musa, a graduate research assistant working with the Coalition on receiving the Best Article Award from Theory into Practice.
April 11, 2024
Children who live in areas with natural spaces (e.g., forests, parks, backyards) from birth may experience fewer emotional issues between the ages of 2 and 5, according to a study funded by the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. Nissa Towe-Goodman, PhD, a research scientist at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, lead this collaborative research.
April 8, 2024
The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute is pleased to announce that the teacher approved app, My STEM Adventure, is a 2024 EdTech Awards Cool Tool Finalist in the STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) solution category.
Organized by EdTech Digest, the EdTech awards program is the world's largest for recognizing the biggest names―and those who soon will be―in education technology.
April 3, 2024
FPG Faculty Fellow Dara Chan, ScD, focuses her research on improving community participation, integration, and inclusion for autistic adults and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Chan, who is an assistant professor in the Division of Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling in UNC’s Department of Health Sciences, often collaborates with FPG colleagues.
April 1, 2024
FPG Postdoctoral Scholar Nicole Telfer, PhD, and Senior Research Scientist Noreen Yazejian, PhD, on behalf of international colleague Solomiia Boikovych, have received the Thelma Harms Early Childhood Education Award. The award is designed to further the understanding and improvement of early childhood program quality internationally.
March 25, 2024
When Nicole Telfer, PhD, enrolled in the doctoral program in applied developmental psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, she was planning on a career focusing on adolescent development. But a graduate course on infancy and early childhood development sparked her interest in working with younger children.
March 20, 2024
The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute helps lead the way in best practices and science of implementation, organizational change, and system reinvention, with the goal of improving outcomes across the human services spectrum. To strengthen this commitment, NIRN developed a new research and evaluation agenda designed to advance implementation research.
March 14, 2024
Sherra Lawrence, MA, is an implementation specialist at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. She leads projects and initiatives to improve the access and quality of programs, policies, and practices for children and families. As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with Lawrence to learn more about her work at FPG.
March 11, 2024
FPG Faculty Fellows Clare Harrop, PhD, Dara Chan, ScD, CRC, and Laura Klinger, PhD, are recipients of a National Institute of Mental Health (R21) grant, allowing them to study the associations between social connections and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in older adults with autism.
March 4, 2024
Using novel brain imaging approaches, clinical psychologist Gabriel Dichter, PhD, seeks to understand how treatments for autism and mood disorders work. His research is synergistic with developmental disabilities explorations happening at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) which led to Dichter becoming an FPG faculty fellow last year.
February 26, 2024
FPG scientists have launched a two-year project, “Transforming Implementation Practice in Early Childhood through the Development of a Professional Learning Program to support Practitioners' Implementation Capabilities,” in partnership with Reach Out and Read in North Carolina and South Carolina to support the development of early childhood practitioners’ and clinicians’ ability to get children ready for kindergarten by improving implementation capacity of the Reach Out and Read intervention delivered in primary care and pediatric clinics.
February 22, 2024
FPG's Chih-Ing Lim and Megan Vinh have been invited to speak at the Zero Project Conference held at the United Nations Offices in Vienna, Austria. The 2024 event, which takes place February 21 through February 23, is a global gathering of innovators within the disability inclusion space.
February 22, 2024
Registration is now open for the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute's 24th annual International Early Childhood Inclusion Institute, which takes place May 7-9, 2024. The event, which will once again be offered in a hybrid format welcoming participants virtually and in-person, is designed for anyone caring for or teaching young children (from birth to age eight) with disabilities in inclusive environments.
February 21, 2024
A chance meeting at a Duke benefit concert attended by a teenage Kimberly Jenkins, guided her toward a career in speech language pathology. Now a faculty fellow at FPG and an assistant professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the UNC School of Medicine, Jenkins focuses her research on language acquisition and development in dual language learners, particularly Spanish and English, from theoretical and applied perspectives.
February 20, 2024
The McKinney Scholars Program at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) is now accepting applications for its 2024 summer cohort. Sophomores and juniors currently attending a North Carolina HBCU and majoring in child development, early education, psychology, or a related field, are encouraged to apply.
February 13, 2024
FPG's Summer Graduate Internship Program in Implementation Practice is seeking two graduate students for their 2024 summer internship opportunity. The program is designed to create a challenging and meaningful professional experience for the trainees that includes mentoring, networking, professional development, and experiential learning opportunities.
February 10, 2024
The UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute is pleased to announce the 2023 awardee of the Joanne Erwich Roberts Early Career Award. Congratulations to Tyler McFayden, a UNC Carolina Institute in Developmental Disabilities postdoctoral fellow and member of the Harrop Lab in the Department of Health Sciences at UNC.
