NIH selects KU, 3 other universities for $8.5M child-neglect prevention study

LAWRENCE -- Child development experts at the University of Kansas and researchers at three other prominent universities have received an $8.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to conduct an ambitious five-year study on preventing child neglect.

The KU Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center; Juniper Gardens Children's Project, a KU affiliate in Kansas City, Kan.; the University of Notre Dame in Indiana; Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; and the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston received the award from the NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Development to form the Centers for Prevention of Child Neglect.

Steven Warren, director of KU's Life Span Institute, and Judith Carta, Life Span senior scientist, will direct the Kansas City site study that will follow 100 single teenage mothers from pregnancy to when their children are 3 years old. Four hundred mothers will be recruited in Kansas City, Houston, Washington, D.C., and South Bend, Ind.

Warren and Carta's work has shown how critical early interaction between a child and parent is to the child's cognitive development.

"We know that child neglect harms children, families, communities and societies," Warren said, "but we need to know more about which approaches and what kinds of support will measurably prevent child neglect in high-risk families as well as enhance overall child development."

The Kansas City mothers will be divided into two groups. Both will get services and support, but one group will receive intensive direct intervention in a comprehensive parenting training program.

A major part of this program was developed by Susan Landry, professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Landry will speak at 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004, in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union at KU. Landry directs the Houston site for the study.

The Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center and the Juniper Gardens Children's Project are two of the 12 research centers affiliated with the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies Center.

Institute scientists conduct research in a variety of settings including underserved urban and rural Kansas communities.

KU's Life Span Institute is one of the largest research and development programs in the nation for the prevention and treatment of developmental disabilities. The institute includes 12 centers and more than 120 programs and projects located on the Lawrence and Medical Center campuses and in Kansas City, Kan., and Parsons.