Child Health and Development

teacher and six young students wearing red hats inside a greenhouse looking at plants

To reach their full potential, children need high-quality health care and services—especially in life’s early years. Health promotion, safety, disease prevention, and early identification and treatment during these earliest years lay the foundation for healthy development.

Mounting evidence that health during childhood sets the stage for adult health creates an important ethical, social, and economic imperative to ensure that all children are as healthy as they can be. Healthy children are more likely to become healthy adults. FPG's scientists study many aspects of child health and development—from prenatal health to infant brain development to stress management in adolescents.

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Utilizing her interdisciplinary experience in social science and epidemiology, Ping Chen specializes in conducting research focusing on social, environmental, behavioral, and biological linkages in developmental and life-course health trajectories. This interest led her to collaborate with colleagues on “Polygenic risk, childhood abuse and gene x environment interactions with depression development from middle to late adulthood: A U.S. national life-course study.”

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Several influential studies reported sex differences in early care and education (ECE) treatment on young adult IQ and academic outcomes. A recent paper extends that work by asking whether sex differences in impacts of the Carolina Abecedarian Project emerged during the treatment period or subsequently and whether sex differences were maintained into middle adulthood.

Featured Research Project

Animal models have provided evidence that the gut microbiome may influence neurodevelopment and behaviors associated with anxiety disorders. Few studies, however, have examined this link in humans. A study led by FPG Faculty Fellow Cathi Propper, PhD, will be the first to examine the influence of early toxic stress, including the distal effects of living in poverty as well as the proximal factors of negative parenting and household chaos, on the development of gut microbiome diversity and maturity across 15, 24, 26, and 54 months

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Transforming Implementation Practice in Early Childhood through the Development of a Professional Learning Program to support Practitioners' Implementation Capabilities

The purpose of this project is to support the development of the early childhood practitioners’ ability to care for children and get them ready for kindergarten by improving their capacity for implementation of interventions in primary care settings.

A Mechanistic Study of the Association Between Poverty and Executive Functions in Early Childhood: Contributions of Early Brain Development and the Early Caregiving Environment

The current study examines the link between poverty and executive functions (cognitive processes that facilitate learning, self-monitoring, and decision making) which are known to undergo rapid developmental change during the first years of life.

African-Centered Racial Equity Justice Project: Embracing Culturally Responsive Practices to Improve Early Learning and Child Outcomes

This project will develop an African-centered, culturally responsive practice guide with specific strategies, exemplars, and materials with connected professional learning modules to guide effective implementation. The ultimate and long-term goal is to increase Black children’s social, cognitive, and emotional skills (e.g., racial identity, engagement, learning motivation, regulation), leading to strong academic and social competence and school success.

An Effectiveness Replication of Targeted Reading Instruction: Investigating Long-Term Student and Teacher Impacts

This replication study seeks to demonstrate the effectiveness of Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention) in helping grade 1 struggling readers make substantial gains in reading during one school year. It extends prior TRI studies by conducting an independent external evaluation of the TRI, testing long-term impacts for struggling readers into grade 3, and examining teachers’ sustained impacts for three years.

Black Infant and Toddler Equity Project

Through collaboration with national, state and local coalitions and organizations, the Equity Research Action Coalition will identify, track and align strategies to strengthen the focus on protecting, promoting, and preserving the well being, health, wealth, access and experiences of Black families and their families through anti-racist and cultural wealth policy making framework and communication.

Building an Ecosystem for Transformative Systems Change for Young Children and Families

The goal of this planning grant is to design a new study focused on deeper, more meaningful investments across three core domains in Head Start. It will result in a policy scan and a preliminary feasibility of an innovative program where there is a laser focus on the trifecta of health, wealth, and education, moving beyond “light touch” impact on families' lives to transformative impact on communities.

Early Life Adversity and the Developmental Programming of Neurocognitive and Behavioral Risk: A Longitudinal Investigation of Early Childhood Telomere Biology

This study will examine the early biological embedding of health and disease risk in young children’s telomeres, a biomarker of cellular aging. We will conduct a novel longitudinal study to examine the effects of prenatal and postnatal early life adversity (i.e., poverty, parent conflict, maternal stress) on accelerated biological aging, including telomere erosion and epigenetic aging clocks, across the first three years of life.

Exploring legal status and race as determinants of Black immigrant maternal health

In collaboration with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and African Family Health Organization, community-based organizations that engage and educate African American and Black immigrant communities, we will conduct an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research to identify barriers and facilitators to positive birth outcomes for Black mothers with a focus on attention to health care access through focus groups and interviews and conduct causal inference analyses using extant data (i.e., Vital Statistics) to examine the effect of 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act on the birthing outcomes of Black immigrants.

From the Womb to Cradle: How Racism Influences the Development of Infants and Preschoolers

The purpose of this collaboration with Boston University is to develop and disseminate various products focused on the effects of racism during infancy through early childhood (birth to age 5) for racially marginalized children and families, specifically those that are Black, Latine, Indigenous, or Asian.

Observer Rating Scale of Preschool Children's Peer Social Competence

The purpose of this project is to establish the psychometric feature and instrument useability of a practitioner-administered observer impression scale assessment of preschool children’s peer-related social competence. The ratings for this scale are based on three 5-minute observations of preschool children engaging in social interaction with their peers. The information may be used for general assessment for all children, screening for children who may need support in establishing positive peer social competence, and progress monitoring. At the end of this project, a fully developed, psychometrically verified, and practical assessment of preschool children’s peer social competence, suitable for scaling up for program use, will be available to early childhood programs and practitioners.

Promoting Seasonal and Migrant Head Start Children's Development: Program Practices That Matter

This study aims to identify unobserved heterogeneity and capture complex patterns of program and classroom characteristics to inform targeted program quality improvement and teacher professional development, and identify program quality features and instructional practices that are beneficial for the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start children’s language and literacy development.

Scaling Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI) to Serve Students Impacted by COVID-19: High-Dosage Digital Implementation of an Effective Reading Intervention

This project will train school staff who support students using pull-out reading instruction and intervention (e.g., “educators” such as reading specialists, paraeducators, instructional facilitators, tutors) to use Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention) with two adaptations: 1) a digital version of the traditionally “paper and pencil” intervention (“TRI app”) in a 2) high dosage model whereby educators provide daily reading support to multiple K-3 students not yet reading on grade level.

Start-up Activities for a Center of Excellence to Support The Duke Endowment's Investments in Evidence-Based Practice Implementation

To support The Duke Endowment’s investments in evidence-based practices across the Rural Church and Child and Family Wellbeing program areas, the project team will engage in several system strengthening activities during the six-month period from January 1st, 2024 through June 30th, 2024. Within the Rural Church Summer Literacy Initiative, the project team will (1) support the refinement of the SLI practice model, (2) engage in programmatic coaching with staff at SLI grantee sites, (3) explore future tailored implementation support activities, and (4) provide design and consultation supports for bolstering data collection and monitoring across SLI grantee sites. Additionally, the project team will engage in several start-up activities for a Center of Excellence to support evidence-based programs and practices in North Carolina and South Carolina. These will include leadership engagement and system coaching, organizational development activities, and change management activities.

Starting Them off on the Right Path: Utilizing Home Visiting to Address Race-based Trauma and Support Children's Racial Identity Formation

The purpose of this project is to gather perspectives from current Parents As Teachers families and parent educators. This is a developmental evaluation to understand how Parents as Teachers (PAT) could address race-based trauma and stressors and support the positive racial identity formation for young children.

The Development of Gut Microbiota and Behavioral Inhibition in Childhood: The Role of Early Stress and Brain Development

The current study will be the first to examine the influence of early toxic stress, including the distal effects of living in poverty as well as the proximal factors of negative parenting and household chaos, on the development of gut microbiome diversity and maturity across 15, 24, 26, and 54 months.

The Power of Language: Does the Quality of Preschool Teacher Language Translate Into Children's Executive Functions?

This project will use secondary data analysis of two longitudinal datasets to test if childcare provider language prospectively predicts child executive functions (EFs) directly or indirectly through child language. We will also examine if different ways of measuring preschool teacher language quality are differentially predictive of child language and subsequent EFs.

Young Children and the Civil Rights Community

The goal of this project is to identify opportunities and barriers to community based organizations, namely civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, The Leadership Conference, the National Urban League, NALEO Education Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), National Congress of American Indian (NCAI) in prioritizing early childhood development including access to high quality and affordable child care.

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute

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