Department News

Arkansas’ 5th Annual Conference on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) will be held on September 14th, 2017 at The Summit Church in North Little Rock. FASD are the leading cause of preventable developmental disorders, with the newest research indicating that almost 1/100 children are born on the spectrum. This means that FASD are more prevalent than Down Syndrome, cleft palate, and spina bifida.

This year’s keynote speaker is Dan Dubovsky, former FASD Specialist at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.  As both a professional and parent of an individual on the spectrum, Mr. Dubovsky brings more than 25 years’ experience to the table.

A recent paper from DFPM RED and UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute features new research highlighting the strong negative impact of maternal behavioral health problems on children’s outcomes. The study of more than 1800 children examines the impact of maternal depression and alcohol abuse on preschool-age children. Among the study’s findings, results indicate that 50% of children whose mothers screened positive for alcohol problems (a score of 2 on the CAGE) had clinically significant problems with externalizing behavior (aggression, rule-breaking, acting out) by 5th grade.

Link to full paper

DFPM RED Research and Data Coordinator and Administrative Lead, LaTunja Sockwell, B.A., was honored with a 2017 Staff Excellence Award for her work with RED. Ms. Sockwell was nominated by RED director  Leanne Whiteside-Mansell, Ed.D. with special notice taken of seven HIV-focused research projects initiated by Ms. Sockwell over the last two years.  The event was featured in the April 2017 edition of COMmunication, UAMS’ monthly newsletter highlighting noteworthy events in the UAMS family.  Congratulations, LaTunja!

REACH targets programs with limited access to state professional development resources and offers training and coaching to manage challenging behaviors and promote social-emotional health.

The project has multiple measures of success; however, the project team’s capacity to REACH is a critical one! We are proud to report that in March 2017, REACH served the following, through TAPP registered workshops:

• 7 counties
• 11 facilities
• ­­140 (unduplicated) participants receiving training, including teachers, directors, other facility staff
• 684—approximate number of children served by these facilities/staff

There were 40 Technical Assistance contacts (e.g. classroom visits, email, text, and phone) to 16 different facilities in 12 cities during March 2017.  These March numbers are pretty typical for this group! Great early childhood education going on in Arkansas!

DFPM RED faculty member Lorraine McKelvey, Ph.D. recently completed work (with other RED team members) on a year-long, grant-funded, study on ACEs impact in Head Start classrooms. Dr. McKelvey’s team has recently submitted a paper to Child Abuse and Neglect highlighting the work done in the study. The study looked at outcomes for ACEs exposed kids based on timing of exposure. The study identified five classes of children:

• Consistently Low (63.8%)
• Decreasing (10.3%)
• High at Age 2 (11.4%)
• Increasing (10.4%)
• Consistently High (4%)

The Consistently Low and Consistently High classes had the most and least optimal development across all domains, respectively. However, the findings for the groups that changed weren’t exactly those expected. For cognitive, language, and physical development, the most proximal ACEs were more robust for predicting child outcomes. For socioemotional health, exposure at any time from one to three to ACEs had negative consequences. As a whole, the team concluded that ACEs screening tools were needed that are both time-sensitive and permit a lifetime report.