Grants

Funding Agency: NIDA  Principal Investigator: David R. Smith, Ph.D.

Web-based training helps neonatal providers care for newborns with opioid withdrawal syndrome

Neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) in the United States has dramatically increased over the past two decades. The average inpatient stay for newborns experiencing NOWS is 5 to 6 times longer and 3 to 10 times more costly than routine care. Current standards of care include extensive observation and monitoring of infants, with a majority receiving pharmacological treatment in neonatal intensive care units.

These prevailing regimens are exorbitantly expensive. They are also being challenged as medically unnecessary and potentially harmful in many cases, as they entail periods of separation between the newborns and their mothers, disrupting bonding and other critical developmental processes.

Emerging nonpharmacologic interventions for NOWS promote high levels of parental contact within a supportive and family-friendly clinical atmosphere. Such approaches have been shown to reduce the duration of inpatient care and the need for pharmacological treatment, leading to more positive health outcomes at significantly lower cost. Efficient and effective resources and materials for training neonatal care providers in such empirically based practices for NOWS are greatly needed.

Funding Agency: NIAAA  Principal Investigators: Mark Van Ryzin Ph.D., David R. Smith, Ph.D.

PeerLearning is a cost-effective, web-based tool that helps teachers deliver academic instruction that promotes active learning and prevents alcohol and drug use.

Positive social engagement can drastically alter the trajectory of adolescents’ lives. Students who experience social marginalization often form groups that reinforce their experience. In these marginalized spaces, alcohol use and other “deviant” activities are often reinforced. This loop can be interrupted by bringing youth from across a school’s social network together through collaborative learning activities.

PeerLearning provides teachers with lesson templates that utilize the following five evidence-based components to make collaborative learning activities effective alcohol and drug prevention programs:

• positive interdependence
• individual accountability
• collaborative social skills
• face-to-face interaction
• guided processing.

Each web-based template allows teachers of any subject to deliver academic instruction that could prevent student alcohol and drug use. The technology also automates lesson logistics, giving teachers more time to engage with their students and bring a broad and varied cross-section of peers together.

The positive social interactions that students experience during PeerLearning lessons lead to greater social acceptance and improved student relationships. This, in turn, improves behavior, social-emotional skills, mental health and academic achievement.

Funding Agency: NIMHD  Principal Investigator: Deb Johnson-Shelton, Ph.D. Co-Investigators: David R. Smith, Ph.D., Steve Daley, Ed Feil, Ph.D. & Brook Claypole

radKIDS® empowers children, helps prevent abuse

Healthy development is often derailed when children are bullied, assaulted, neglected or abused, and the effects are compounded when those children are low-income, from a minority group, or from rural communities. Such victimization can also harm educational outcomes due to higher absenteeism, including reduced growth in reading and math, less engagement in positive youth development activities, higher rates of school drop-out, and greater risk for substance abuse, delinquency and violent adolescent behavior.

The radKIDS® Personal Empowerment and Safety Education Program is a community-based program developed in response to national guidelines for educating children in child safety and preventing victimization. radKIDS® uses activity-based skill training to help children develop personal safety boundaries, critical thinking skills for responding to threats of danger, age-appropriate coping strategies for dealing with current and past victimization, self-assertiveness and physical skills for self-defense, communication skills for reporting incidences to parents/adults, and growing child self-worth — the program’s cornerstone for personal safety and healthy development.

The proposed project will adapt the radKIDS® instructor training into a technology-based delivery system that can be used for broad-scale dissemination in schools.

Funding Agency: NIMH  Principal Investigators: Brian Danaher, Ph.D.,  David R. Smith, Ph.D.

eHealth program helps new mothers battle depression
Women who experience depression immediately before and after birth, about 14 percent to 20 percent, face serious health consequences and suffering. Their families and their infants’ development are also negatively affected.

Unfortunately, barriers such as stigma and a lack of care providers and treatment options make it difficult for women with prenatal or postpartum depression (PPD) to access clinic-based mental health treatments. As a result, participation is low.

MomMoodBooster (MMB) addresses this challenge. Based on cognitive behavioral therapy and incorporating multimedia modeling and engaging activities, MMB is designed to help women identify patterns in their thoughts and behaviors and to develop a personal action plan to make helpful changes. A website is used by both project managers and supportive phone coaches to monitor participants’ overall progress. MMB serves as a commercial-ready product that fits the workflow and staffing of healthcare organizations.

Funding Agency: NIDA  Principal Investigators: Judy Andrews, Ph.D., David R. Smith, Ph.D., Judith Gordon, Ph.D., University of Arizona

Tobacco prevention program includes e-cigarettes
Unlike smoking, e-cigarette use is rising, even exceeding that of cigarette use, and youth are most at risk, experiencing a range of negative health effects and a risk of addiction. Because of these dangers, it’s crucial to incorporate e-cig use into tobacco prevention programs targeting youth. Click City®: Tobacco does just that.

Designed for students in the 5th grade, with a booster program for 6th graders, Click City®: Tobacco intervenes at a critical time before most youth experiment with using tobacco. Because the program is computer-based, it requires little teacher training time, allows students to work independently, provides teachers with time to work individually with other students, and encourages student engagement through interactive activities and games.

The updated program is available on a variety of devices, making it flexible for teachers and administrators, and most activities include e-cig use. Widespread implementation could have a significant impact on the public’s health, decreasing the use of nicotine products and related disease.

Funding Agency: NIDA  Principal Investigators: Camille C. Cioffi & Jeremy A. Jones  Co-Investigator: David R. Smith

Focus on fathers: Technology addresses skill-building, opioid misuse

Like all caregivers, fathers who misuse opioids need the right skills to be effective parents to their children. Because of Fathering Through Change (FTC), this underserved population will now get the attention they need through web-based mobile technology.

Drawing on evidence-based programs and best practices, FTC will provide a personalized, interactive instructional approach that enhances participants’ learning and helps develops self-efficacy and engagement in the fathering role. Learning will focus on building engagement and understanding the key parenting skills of emotional self‐regulation, giving effective directions, and delivering positive reinforcement.

The program itself will be evaluated for its effectiveness in reducing opioid misuse and improving father and child outcomes.

Funding Agency: NIMHD Principal Investigators: Jessie Marquez, Patricia Vadasy, Ph.D.

App supports sibling well-being in families experiencing disability

Most individuals with disabilities have typically developing brothers and sisters.  Siblings usually share high levels of involvement in each other’s lives, particularly in childhood and in older age. Yet, despite the important and lifelong roles siblings play in the lives of their brothers and sisters who have special needs, even the most family-friendly agencies often overlook sibling health and well-being. Research documents health risks to family caretakers of people with special needs, and minority family caretakers are disproportionately likely to suffer these risks.

For the past 30 years, the Sibling Support Project (SSP) has developed a national and international network that provides innovative workshops for siblings and parents to share their challenges and concerns, and to learn effective social-emotional and behavioral health strategies. Access to these in-person workshops is limited by geographic, socio-economic, cultural and other factors.

Bridging this gap is an assistive mobile app for developing knowledge, skills and routines for attending to siblings’ (ages 3-5) social-emotional health and well-being. Age and culturally appropriate multimedia content and interactive behavioral skill-building features allow families to easily access and engage in the intervention at the time and place that best meets their needs.

Funding Agency: NIMH Principal Investigators: Ed Feil, PH.D, David Smith, Ph.D.

Mom-Net helps moms with depression

Low-income mothers of young children represent a disadvantaged group who are at exceptional risk for depressive syndromes and who have increasingly limited access to mental health services. Despite the availability of treatments, most do not receive treatment due to a lack of mental health coverage or available providers, or because of childcare or transportation issues. For rural women, these difficulties may be compounded by the scarcity of providers within reasonable proximity.

This project, will develop and evaluate a prototype coach training tool for Mom-Net, a clinically effective online intervention tailored to mothers of young children. The training program will improve dissemination of Mom-Net by being cost-effective, scalable and by leveraging technology to provide a consistent training experience.

Funding Agency: NIDCR  Principal Investigators: David R. Smith, Ph.D., Ed Feil, Ph.D.

App helps parents provide the foundation for a lifetime of good dental hygiene
Despite early childhood oral health, preventive education and dental care, which enhance the opportunity for a lifetime free from preventable oral disease, approximately one in three 2- to 5-year-old children in the United States experiences tooth decay.

Parents struggle to adopt preventive strategies at the same time that challenging behaviors emerge in children’s psychological development. This combination can make it difficult to build the foundation of oral health practices, including behavioral parenting strategies, that experts recommend.

BeReady2Smile is a private/public collaboration between Influents Innovations, Oregon Research Institute and The Oregon Community Foundation that leverages resources to create a coordinated oral health prevention program to promote dental health targeted to parents of young children attending parenting education classes and families receiving home visiting services through Head Start.

The program includes a video that can be shown in parenting education classes to educate parents on oral health and a mobile/web application to drive behavioral change. It also features demonstrations and content on encouraging brushing, proper brushing techniques, fluoride myths and limiting sugar sweetened beverages and milk in baby bottles while in bed. Parents can participate in multimedia educational activities, develop dental health behavior plans, tailor features and receive feedback from the system on a secure website.

Funding Agency: NIDCR  Principal Investigators: Ed Feil, Ph.D., David Smith, Ph.D.  Co-Investigators: Jessie Marquez

Early intervention means better oral health for life

Good oral health begins in childhood, yet approximately one out of three 2- to 5-year-old children in the United States has experienced tooth decay.

Part of the challenge is that parents need to incorporate good preventive strategies at a time when difficult behaviors emerge. Evidence suggests using behavioral parenting strategies to help.

One such strategy is the prevention intervention program BeReady2Smile (BR2S), which introduces behavioral training strategies, promotes dental health and targets parents of young children attending parenting education classes and those receiving home visiting services through Head Start.

Building on that program is BeReady2Smile_ProD, which improves dissemination and implementation of BR2S and enables both home-based and group-based delivery. The program helps educate and support parenting educators and strives to help parents provide the foundation for a lifetime free from preventable oral disease.

Funding Agency: NIDA  Principal Investigators: Dana Smith, Ph.D.

Qlarity – Unique mindfulness app reduces adolescent substance use
Adolescents in the juvenile justice system demonstrate high rates of tobacco, alcohol and other drug use at rates up to three times higher than other youth. Substance abusing youth are also at higher risk than nonusers for mental health problems, including depression, conduct problems, personality disorders, suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide and completed suicide.

Interventions based on mindfulness are an effective intervention for a variety of problems, including substance use among adolescents. Qlarity, a 12-module program, is the only mindfulness-based mobile app specifically targeting the reduction or cessation of adolescent substance use

Qlarity can be used both as a complement to existing treatments and for use in the juvenile justice system. The research and development team has extensive experience in working with adolescents who engage in substance abuse.

Funding Agency: NIMH  Principal Investigators: Brian Danaher, Ph.D., John Seeley, Ph.D., David R. Smith, Ph.D., Richard Silver, M.D., NorthShore Health System

eHealth program helps new mothers battle depression
Women who experience depression immediately before and after birth, about 14 percent to 20 percent, face serious health consequences and suffering. Their families and their infants’ development are also negatively affected.

Unfortunately, barriers such as stigma and a lack of care providers and treatment options make it difficult for women with prenatal or postpartum depression (PPD) to access clinic-based mental health treatments. As a result, participation is low.

MomMoodBooster (MMB) addresses this challenge. Based on cognitive behavioral therapy and incorporating multimedia modeling and engaging activities, MMB is designed to help women identify patterns in their thoughts and behaviors and to develop a personal action plan to make helpful changes. A website is used by both project managers and supportive phone coaches to monitor participants’ overall progress. MMB serves as a commercial-ready product that fits the workflow and staffing of healthcare organizations.

Funding Agency: NIMHD  Principal Investigators: Jesse Marquez, Patricia Vadasy, Ph.D.

Bilingual voice app improves education and health of Latino students and their families
The STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – proficiency of Latino elementary students prepares them for success in secondary- and college-level STEM content courses and in STEM fields after graduation. But although STEM fields account for most U.S. economic growth, Latino students are less likely to enroll or complete degrees in undergraduate and graduate STEM programs.

Talk STEM Familia promotes Latino students’ proficiency of the STEM vocabulary by using a smart-speaker-based approach to acquiring and practicing these words by upper elementary students and their families.

This Spanish-English app for more widely used smart-speakers provides a school-to-home bridge that enables families’ engagement in their child’s academic language acquisition. Smart-speaker technology can be used to deploy rich audio learning strategies, including bilingual instruction in definitions of target words and their pronunciations, on-demand audio games that stimulate vocabulary recognition, pronunciation, usage practice and recall, and brief audio dialogues that model the use and prompt practice of target words in culturally appropriate family and STEM contexts. Talk STEM Familia leverages limited classroom instructional time by enabling content-area and ELD teachers to provide synchronous practice opportunities and feedback on learning.

Funding Agency: NIMHD  Principal Investigators: Jesse Marquez, Patricia Vadasy, Ph.D.

Language app improves long-term educational and health outcomes among Latino families
Although STEM fields account for most U.S. economic growth, Latino students are not likely to enroll or complete degrees in undergraduate and graduate STEM programs. Given well-established research linking grade completion, economic success and overall health and well-being, this trend could result in serious, negative, long-term physical and mental health outcomes for Latinos.

Access to higher education generally, and STEM programs in particular, is hindered by lagging academic literacy and especially by unfamiliarity with abstract words that make up the scientific academic vocabulary. Words such as conclusion, evidence, method, integrate, relevant, distinct and component are fundamental to STEM content-area learning, but are uncommon in everyday conversation, particularly in homes where English is not the first language.

To promote Latino students’ scientific vocabulary, STEM Familia, a Spanish-English app, enables schools to overcome language and access barriers that impede families’ engagement in academic support. This technology can be used to deploy rich media strategies, including motion-graphic illustration and definition of target words, touch-screen games that stimulate vocabulary recognition and recall, and brief video vignettes that model the use of target words in culturally appropriate family contexts.

STEM Familia helps schools to leverage classroom instructional time by enabling teachers to provide synchronous practice opportunities and feedback on vocabulary.

Funding Agency: National Institute on Minority Health & Health Disparities Principal Investigators: Jesse Marquez, Patricia Vadasy, Ph.D.  Co-Investigator: David R. Smith

App builds language – and confidence – in STEM

STEM fields account for most high-wage U.S. economic growth, but Latinx students are underrepresented in undergraduate and graduate STEM programs, which can impact future economic success and overall health and well-being.

This lack of representation is due to gaps in academic literacy and unfamiliarity with scientific academic vocabulary (SAV), which is fundamental to STEM learning but uncommon in everyday conversation, particularly in homes where English is not the first language.

Talk STEM Familia (TSF) promotes SAV proficiency via a technology-based approach that is culturally relevant, evidence-based and accessible via mobile phones, tablets and smart-speaker devices. The complete program includes about 72 frequent SAV words that appear in STEM texts across middle and secondary grades and curricula, grade levels that can have a significant impact on achievement.

In each 10-minute learning experience, students and families receive dual-language instruction, practice and feedback on pronunciation, and meaning and usage of one target SAV word. The program features Spanish-language home vignettes that model parents and children using SAV in familiar home contexts, and English-language vignettes that model teachers and students using SAV in grade-appropriate academic contexts. The learning games guide families through an instructional progression designed to incrementally build language skills and confidence, with activities designed to encourage word use in family conversations.

Funding Agency: NICHD  Principal Investigators: Barbara Gunn, Ph.D, Jesse Marquez

TEPRR App helps preschool teachers support critical language and literacy development

From birth to about age five, children experience an incredible window of opportunity for language development and early literacy skills. Through interactions with other human beings, children pick up spoken language and begin to learn how print language works. They can start to recognize that letters have names and sounds, words are made up of letters, and sentences are made up of words.

Building vocabulary, print awareness and other emergent language and literacy skills is foundational to later reading success. In fact, children who do not learn emergent language and literacy skills in preschool can face barriers to essential reading skills later in elementary school. Targeted literacy training for preschool teachers can help children enter elementary school with essential early literacy skills in place.

TEPRR is a cost-effective, evidence-based professional development program that facilitates teachers’ mastery of language and literacy instruction. The accessible online education and classroom tools make implementation easy for teachers and simple for classroom aids and volunteers to support.

The TEPRR tool also enables coaching via teleconference, so teachers can receive individualized feedback on video work samples. Through the TEPRR training teachers will learn:

• How to teach behavioral skills necessary for learning language and literacy.
• How to introduce and demonstrate a new language and literacy skill.
• How to provide adequate and appropriate practice.
• How to monitor children’s understanding and provide corrective feedback.
• How to work with aides and volunteers on providing additional instructional support.

Funding Agency: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development Principal Investigators: Carol Metzler, Ph.D, David Smith, Ph.D.

Alexa, let’s talk parenting: Smart speakers support parents experiencing challenges

Evidence-based parenting programs that help parents develop predictable, positive family routines can help children’s long-term psychosocial and academic success and lower the risk of substance abuse in adolescence. Such in-person programs, however, present their own set of challenges, including logistics and recruiting, engaging and retaining parents. The challenges are such that many who could benefit from parenting assistance never receive it.

A technology-based parenting intervention addresses that barrier and brings evidence-based parenting supports to a broad range of parents. It also address the issue of engagement because parents can receive engaging, motivating, on-demand support on how to foster healthy routines for their children.

“Talk Parenting” will be accessed via Amazon Alexa Echo smart speaker devices. Families will be able to access this support, including a guided bedtime routine and experiential practice in self-regulation skills, through hands-free simple voice commands and interactions with the smart speaker device.