Child Intervention Prevention and Services Summer Research Institute

NIMH
ID: 2R25MH068367-06
PI: NEAL RYAN, MD
TERM: 08/03 – 06/14

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant on NIH RePORTER): This R-25 application requests a second five years of funding to support an ongoing, successful five-site, interdisciplinary training consortium in Child Intervention Prevention, and Services mental health research (CHIPS). Each year the CHIPS program provides a new cohort of sixteen early career scientists who are postdoctoral fellows or junior faculty, with career enhancement and direction through an annual 5-day intensive summer research institute and then a subsequent year of intensive one-on-one telephone and in-person mentoring with one of the institute faculty.

The overarching goals of this program are to: (1) recruit and retain promising early career scientists to child and adolescent mental health intervention, prevention, and services research; (2) increase their success rate and decrease the time to successful acquisition of external NIH funding; and (3) prepare researchers who can conduct research that spans the boundaries of intervention, prevention, and services research and that is informed by advances in translational and developmental science. We will evaluate the ongoing impact of CHIPS by monitoring academic productivity as measured by publications, external funding, and academic advancement.

This application supports a training consortium of 5 sites: University of Pittsburgh (the coordinating site, Neal Ryan, M.D. and David Brent, M.D.), Arizona State University (Irwin Sandler, Ph.D.), Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego (John Landsverk, Ph.D.), Johns Hopkins University (Phil Leaf, Ph.D. and Nicholas Ialongo Ph.D.), and University of California, Los Angeles (Bonnie Zima, M.D., MPH). These sites all participated in the current CHIPS program and have successful track records in helping early career scientists develop independent research careers. Collectively, they span the breadth of intervention, prevention, and services research, and thus can promote the development of a broader training perspective to program participants than any single training site.

Public Health Relevance: Improved prevention and treatment of major psychiatric disorders in youth is a national priority. This R25 targets the critical transition of postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty without funding to successfully funded researcher through a successful Summer Research Institute and subsequent year-long mentoring process. Our career development approach is based on the model of other successful Summer Research Institutes that target researchers studying adults and geriatric populations but modified to give greater time to small-group and one-on-one mentoring with many of the most senior researchers in this field.

DEB CHILDRESS, PHD

Chief of Research and Learning Content

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Childress obtained her PhD in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to 3C Institute, she served as a research associate and a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on a longitudinal imaging study aimed at identifying the early markers of autism through behavioral and imaging methodologies. She has 19 years of autism research experience, during which she has examined the behavioral, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals with autism and their family members. Dr. Childress also has experience developing behavioral and parent report measurement tools, coordinating multi-site research studies, and collecting data from children and families. She has taught courses and seminars in general child development, autism, and cognitive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Expertise

  • autism
  • early development
  • behavioral measurement
  • integrating behavioral and biological measurement

Education

  • Postdoctoral fellowship, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Institutional NRSA-NICHD), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • PhD, developmental psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • BS, psychology (minor in sociology), University of Iowa

Selected Publications

  • Elison, J. T., Wolff, J. J., Heimer, D. C., Paterson, S. J., Gu, H., Hazlett, H. C., Styner, M, Gerig, G., & Piven, J. (in press). Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months. Developmental Science.
  • Wassink, T. H., Vieland, V. J., Sheffield, V. C., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., Childress, D. & Piven, J. (2008). Posterior probability of linkage analysis of autism dataset identifies linkage to chromosome 16. Psychiatric Genetics,18(2),85-91.
  • Losh, M., Childress, D., Lam K. & Piven, J. (2008). Defining key features of the broad autism phenotype: A comparison across parents of multiple- and single-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 147B(4):424-33.
  • Wassink, T. H., Piven, J., Vieland, V. J., Jenkins, L., Frantz R., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., … Sheffield, V.C. (2005). Evaluation of the chromosome 2q37.3 gene CENTG2 as an autism susceptibility gene. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 136, 36-44.
  • Barrett, S., Beck, J., Bernier, R., Bisson, E., Braun, T., Casavant, T., Childress, D., … Vieland, V. (1999). An autosomal genomic screen for autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88, 609-615. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19991215)88:63.0.CO;2-L
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Landa, R., Santangelo, S., Jacobi, D. & Childress, D. (1997). Personality and language characteristics in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 74, 398-411.
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Jacobi, D., Childress, D. & Arndt, S. (1997). Broader autism phenotype: Evidence from a family history study of multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 185-190.