CFR celebrates the holidays
CFR members gathered for our annual holiday luncheon on December 7th. With pandemic interruptions in recent years, staff enjoyed being able to get together in person again.
CFR’s funding for Home Visiting Services support renewed
CFR received renewed funding this fall from Georgia’s Department of Public Health, Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services, and the United Way of Greater Atlanta to continue our work helping ensure high quality home visiting services for at risk families, beginning prenatally and continuing through age 5, across the state of Georgia.
Under the leadership of CFR’s Associate Director, Dr. Anita Brown, CFR’s Technical Assistance and Quality Team provides technical assistance and training for Georgia’s Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program which comprises home visiting programs in 62 counties. The DFCS funds support training and technical assistance for First Steps screening program which links families to community resources and programs, including home visiting if they are eligible. The United Way funds are specifically to support Georgia’s Parents as Teachers (PAT) state office where CFR employee Jessica Gurnow provides technical assistance and training for all current PAT programs and guidance to communities interested in starting a program. The funds also support the annual Home Visiting Institute, a day-long series of workshops available to all home visiting staff across the state and organized by CFR’s Home Visiting Technical Assistance and Quality Director, Michelle Lanier.
Sierra Carter presentation
Sierra Carter on the importance of
understanding how racism impacts health
We have confronted racism in new ways in recent years, but “historically,” says Dr. Sierra Carter, “we have not had conversations about what that means for livelihood, what that means for trajectories of life.” She set about explaining why it is important to study the effects of racism on health in her presentation to faculty, staff, and students gathered at the Miller Learning Center’s Reading Room on October 12th. The presentation, entitled, “Black people deserve to grow old: Racial trauma, accelerated aging, and the Promotion of Health-Equity Related Research,” was co-sponsored by the Center for Family Research, the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research, and the departments of Human Development & Family Science and Psychology.
Carter says there has been important research in recent years on things like how racism-caused stress gets “under the skin,” some of it by people in the room she noted, but she says there is much more to do. “I think there’s still research to be done around the biological embedding of racism,” she explained. “We look at it in isolated spaces, and we don’t think about its life course impact.”
Carter’s research integrates psychology, biology, public health, and developmental science providing evidence that: (1) racism is a multi-level influence that undermines health across the lifespan and over multiple generations; (2) the existence of entrenched racism requires development of culturally-informed, prevention-oriented interventions among underrepresented populations, and (3) the deeply entrenched nature of racism requires dissemination of findings to affected populations, policymakers, as well as to fellow scholars.
Dr. Carter is an Associate Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at Georgia State University.
The Georgia Home Visiting Institute restarts in person
The thirteenth annual Georgia Home Visiting Institute (HVI) was held August 29 in Peachtree City after meeting virtually the last three years due to the pandemic. HVI provides training for Georgia home visitors and staff to develop and enhance core competencies critical to their work. Two hundred and forty-eight participants came from around the state learn strategies to improve the quality and effectiveness of home visiting services, with an emphasis on supporting healthy infant/toddler development and parent-child relationships and developing skills necessary for establishing, building, and enhancing relationships with families.
HVI is sponsored by the Georgia Department of Public Health in partnership with United Way of Greater Atlanta. The Georgia Department of Public Health and CFR’s Home Visiting Technical Assistance and Quality Team (TAQ) served as the HVI planning committee.
This year’s theme, Welcome Home, was significant for many reasons. Many home visitors began to serve children and families in their homes after a long period of social and physical distancing. In addition, many staff returned to Peachtree City, where the Home Visiting Institute has been held for many years. And finally, for those who are experiencing the Institute for the first time, they had the opportunity to gather for a day of fellowship, fun and learning which simply felt like home.
Ehrlich featured in APS story
Dr. Katie Ehrlich, UGA associate professor of psychology and research affiliate with CFR, was featured in a recent article from the Association for Psychological Science. The article entitled, “Careers Up Close: Katie Ehrlich on Studying Intergenerational Health Disparities, Finding Your Footing, and Helping Others Succeed,” tells the story of her career and includes her advice to new scholars.
Read the story: Careers Up Close: Katie Ehrlich on Studying Intergenerational Health Disparities, Finding Your Footing, and Helping Others Succeed
Photo courtesy: APS
CFR Celebrates Gene Brody
CFR’s founder and former director, Gene Brody, retired this year, and CFR staff, many of his colleagues, family, and friends, celebrated his life and career at the university’s Georgia Museum of Art last week. Guests recalled his stellar career in ground-breaking research, his mentorship of students and young professionals, and his ability to be kind in all his interactions with people.
Read more about Dr. Brody and his career.
CFR’s Tracy Anderson begins Women’s Staff Leadership Institute
Tracy Anderson, assistant director of CFR, has been selected to participate in the university’s Women’s Staff Leadership Institute which “provides participants the chance to explore leadership opportunities, reflect upon key leadership traits and skills, and support one another in issues that female leaders face in higher education administration.” Selection is based on current and potential for leadership at the university.
In her role at CFR, Dr. Anderson provides a wide range of leadership through management of the teams of personnel involved in our research projects and is responsible for the dissemination of our Strong African American Families programs. Read more about this year’s cohort of Institute participants.
Congratulations Tracy. Lead on!
Mei Ling Ong Promoted to Associate Research Scientist
After a rigorous review process by committees at CFR as well as the level of the OVPR and the Provost, CFR’s Dr. Mei Ling Ong was promoted to Associate Research Scientist on March 1, 2023.
In her role as Assistant Research Scientist at the Center, Mei Ling has been the primary force in managing the large and complicated multi-wave project known as the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). The FACHS project has grown dramatically over the past several years as the collection of new types of samples and increasing attention to DNA and DNA methylation as predictors and outcomes has expanded and complicated data analysis.
In addition, Mei Ling has been publishing research on factors that contribute to accelerated epigenetic aging. Her work integrates longitudinal, biological, epigenetic methods to increase our understanding of healthy development and protective processes. As Rick Gibbons, a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut and collaborator with CFR, noted, “her expertise has resulted in a rapid expansion of the number of studies the FACHS group has been able to publish.”
In addition to the important role she has played in data management and analytics as well as her important role in publishing outstanding research, Dr. Ong has also played an important supportive role in the development of grant proposals at CFR, contributing strongly to another strategic goal of the Center.
CFR director, Dr. Steve Beach says that “we feel very fortunate to have Mei Ling as part of the CFR team – and very happy that she has been given this much-deserved promotion.”
2023 Symposium: What we are learning about the adolescent brain
The 2023 Gene Brody Symposium was held virtually on February 9 on YouTube. Dr. Olu Ajilore, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois-Chicago, talked with Adriana Galván, Professor of Psychology at UCLA about her work uncovering the mysteries of adolescent brain development and how we can help youth in this developmental period. The discussion is available for viewing:
Gene Brody Symposiums – Center for Family Research (uga.edu)