News Archive
December 11, 2024
Joy Yin has worked at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) for more than 20 years. She is an applications specialist programmer working within the Institute’s Data Management and Analysis Core (DMAC). As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with Yin to learn more about her work at FPG.
December 1, 2024
To share the most recent data on the accumulation and types of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, in North Carolina and the South, Daniel Gitterman, a Faculty Fellow at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, led the development of two new policy briefs, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in North Carolina, 2016-22 and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in the South and U.S., 2022. The reports quantify the problem and help bring renewed attention to social policies that address child poverty and well-being.
November 26, 2024
A new study shows that adding text messaging to traditional in-clinic health counseling for parents about feeding habits, playtime, and exercise prevents very young children from developing obesity and potentially lifelong obesity-related problems. Findings from the study, co-led by Kori Flower, were published in JAMA. Samantha Schilling was also a co-investigator on the study. Both Flower and Schilling are Faculty Fellows at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.
November 20, 2024
Christine Harradine earned both her MA and PhD in Educational Psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill and is a long-time member of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) family. As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with her to learn more about her work at FPG. FInd out what she had to say.
November 18, 2024
Executive functions play a role in future academic achievement, interpersonal skills, and emotion regulation. To understand how to best measure these skills in young children, FPG Advanced Research Scientist Laura Kuhn and colleagues compared three performance-based measures of executive functions that have been developed for preschoolers. The results of that work were published in “A Comparison of Three Executive Function Batteries in a Preschool-Aged Sample."
November 14, 2024
The James J. Gallagher Award is given annually to two employees of UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) in recognition of their contributions and dedication to the FPG community. This year, FPG is pleased to recognize both Technical Assistance Specialist Jessica Amsbary and Research Associate Sarah Wackerhagen for their outstanding service to the Institute.
November 11, 2024
Anhedonia, the inability to anticipate or experience pleasure, can emerge during adolescence and often precedes the onset of more severe psychopathology such as mood disorders and psychosis. FPG Faculty Fellow Aysenil Belger and colleague Danielle Roubinov, an associate professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry, will lead an innovative study of the predictors of anhedonia in young people.
November 6, 2024
The mission of STEMIE at FPG is to improve access and participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities for young children with disabilities and intersecting identities. Understanding the importance of identifying disparities in STEM education, a STEMIE team recently examined the literature and published their findings.
November 4, 2024
Megan Bookhout is a research scientist with the National Implementation Research Network at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with Bookhout to learn more about her work at FPG. Here’s what she had to say.
October 30, 2024
Desiree Murray, a faculty fellow at FPG and senior research scientist at the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Gillings School of Global Public Health, is among a group of four Carolina faculty members to receive the first Translating Innovative Ideas for the Public Good Awards.
October 25, 2024
While early childhood experts agree that school expulsion is an ineffective behavior management strategy, each year more than 17,000 children aged three to five—largely boys and Black, Latine, and Native American children—are permanently removed from preschools. Recognizing the negative impacts of exclusionary discipline, Iheoma U. Iruka co-edited Early Childhood Research Quarterly’s “Special Issue: Advancing the science of early childhood expulsion prevention."
October 22, 2024
At the start of the new fiscal year in July 2024, Implementation Specialist Tamara Robertson and FPG Senior Implementation Specialist Jessica Reed assumed leadership of The Triple P team within the Impact Center at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, which currently provides implementation support for the scale-up and expansion of the Triple P—Positive Parenting Program®—System of Interventions in North Carolina.
October 17, 2024
While research shows that external implementation support can help successfully implement and scale up interventions, there has been less investigation about the experience of those receiving it. To address this lack of information, a team at The Impact Center FPG explored the feasibility of implementation support and published, “A feasibility study of external implementation support provided across two states in the U.S.” in Implementation Research and Practice.
October 14, 2024
In this edition of our FPG Profile Series, meet Danielle Allen, a project director for FPG's Equity Research Action Coalition. Her research interests include the role of Black faith communities in advocating for and providing high quality educational opportunities for students and families as well as state-level efforts to address equity within education.
October 10, 2024
A significant body of research highlights the negative impact of summer learning loss, where students experience academic setbacks when they are not engaged in learning during school breaks. This issue disproportionately affects children in low-income and under-resourced communities, where access to summer educational opportunities is often limited, further widening the achievement gap. See what some folks at FPG are doing to help address this issue.
October 8, 2024
Stephen McKinney, MA, is an implementation associate with the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with McKinney to learn more about his work here at the Institute. Find out what he had to say.
October 3, 2024
One of the many ways that FPG fulfills its mission of transforming children's lives through innovation in research, practice, and policy is by collaborating with North Carolina state agencies and other partners. The Impact Center at FPG’s Build Up project is one of the most recent efforts to help partner organizations design effective systems for delivering their policy programs and activities.
EMERGE study to explore language trajectories of low-income, ethnically diverse children with autism
September 30, 2024
Researchers at UCLA and FPG will co-lead a unique project to assess behavioral and neurological markers of language development in low-income children within their family settings, gathering valuable information that could lead to earlier, more targeted interventions for a population that has been largely underrepresented in autism research.
September 25, 2024
FPG Faculty Fellow Cathi Propper, PhD, an associate professor at the UNC School of Nursing, has been awarded a new NIH R01 grant of $2,656,378 for a project titled, “Early Education, School Readiness, and Early School Success Among Children in Poverty: Exploring the Role of Parasympathetic Function in the Preschool Classroom.”
September 23, 2024
A recent study conducted by the Equity Research Action Coalition at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and the Gallup Center on Black Voices found a possible link between social connections and Black parents’ ability to cope with racism and discrimination.
