Owens Institute for Behavioral Research at The University of Georgia
The 2024 Gene Brody Symposium was held February 29 on YouTube and X. Hosted by April Few-Demo of UGA’s Department of Human Development and Family Science, the symposium featured Debra Furr-Holden, Dean of New York University’s School of Global Public Health. Watch it on our YouTube channel.
Debra Furr-Holden, a highly regarded scholar in health disparities and policy-level interventions promoting health equity, will be featured in this year’s Gene Brody Symposium, co-sponsored by CFR and the College of Public Health at UGA. Dr. Furr-Holden is Dean of NYU’s School of Global Public Health and has extensive experience working with local and national policymakers through her action-oriented research. Leading the discussion will be UGA’s April Few-Demo, department head of Human Development and Family Science in UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Watch the discussion on our YouTube stream or X February 29 at 2 pm EST.
A new peer-reviewed study from CFR scholars found that for participants in the Strong African American Families program, the “intervention reduced the incidence of racism-related mental health symptoms among Black adolescents.” CFR’s Dr. Steve Kogan, lead author of the study, explained the finding by saying, “we know that families can provide a buffer against stressful and traumatic experiences like racism when they do certain things such as encouraging Black pride in their youth and building a strong parent-child relationship.”
Read more in this UGA Research feature.
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 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.
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 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.
