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Category: Announcements

CFR invites Athens-based agencies to apply for no-cost training and technical assistance to deliver the Strong African American Families-Teen program

SAAF program manual coverCFR is offering training and access to our Strong African American Families-Teen (SAAF-T) program to an Athens-area organization with a history of success providing community-based family programming in communities of color. SAAF-T is a 5-session, interactive program for African American teens aged 14-16 and their caregivers. It focuses on strategies that help teens make positive decisions regarding their future and addresses risks that can deter positive development. Learn more about SAAF-T.

Interested agencies should read the Request for Proposals for details on completing the application. For questions, contact Tracy Anderson at tnander@uga.edu

2023 Gene Brody Symposium | Mark your calendar

The 2023 Gene Brody Symposium will provide a fascinating discussion about the adolescent brain between Adriana Galván, Professor of Psychology at UCLA, and Olu Ajilore, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The discussion will explore Dr. Galvan’s multimodal approach to understanding how brain development in adolescents affects and is affected by experience. How can caregivers, educators and practitioners support adolescents through this developmental period? How does adolescent brain development affect their ability to learn? What is the effect of sleep and stress on adolescent cognitive and emotional development? Hear what Dr. Galván is learning from her research and what questions remain. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions.

Watch live on YouTube: 2023 Gene Brody Symposium – YouTube

February 9, 2023 at 2 pm EST

FACHS study featured by @UGAResearch

UGA’s Office of Research Communications has featured an article describing the ongoing work of CFR’s Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). The article describes the origins of the study along with current efforts to further insight into the effect of family processes, neighborhood characteristics, and other contextual factors on African American parents and their children.

FACHS: 25 years of studying health and well-being in African American families – UGA Research News

Symposium available for viewing

Nia Heard-Garris and Kim Noble If you were not able to watch the 2022 Gene Brody Symposium live, you can watch a recording at your leisure. The Symposium was a discussion between Kim Noble and Nia Heard-Garris about Noble’s groundbreaking study on poverty and cognitive development in children. Noble and her colleagues seek to understand if poverty has its negative influence on infants’ cognitive development indirectly or if it is just the absence or presence of income in the family.

2022 Gene Brody Symposium–March 2

Understanding the impact of poverty on childhood brain developmentWe have known for a long time that being born into an impoverished environment can lead to a number of negative outcomes for children. One of those is that children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to be behind more advantaged children in their cognitive development. But what are the mechanisms through which this happens? Does poverty affect cognitive development indirectly by reducing access to resources like quality housing and nutrition, or is it the actual presence or absence of income?

Join us for a discussion with Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD–Professor of Neuroscience and Education at Columbia University–to explore the relation between poverty and child development including learning more about a ground-breaking study underway to learn if simply reducing poverty alone can affect brain development positively. The discussion will be broadcast live on here on YouTube.

March 2, 1:00-200 pm EST

Add this to your calendar

Have a question for Dr. Noble? Send it to symposium@uga.edu ahead of time or during the broadcast.

Kim Noble, MD, PhD
Kim Noble, MD, PhD

Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. As a neuroscientist and board-certified pediatrician, she directs the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development (NEED) lab, where she and her team study how socioeconomic inequality relates to children’s cognitive, emotional, and brain development.  Her work examines socioeconomic disparities in cognitive development, as well as brain structure and function, across infancy, childhood, and adolescence.

 

The Gene Brody Symposium honors Regents Professor and the Center for Family Research Co-Director, Dr. Gene Brody

New CFR video on John Henryism

The theoretical and empirical work by Dr. Sherman James informs the research undertaken by CFR scientists on how stress gets under the skin and into the brains of African American young people and adults. In this new video from CFR, James shares how the idea came about and how it continues to influence thinking today. See also our complete resource on John Henryism.

CFR launches its next wave of studies


CFR has begun recruiting participants for its P50 study referred to as, “HARP,” or the “Health and Resilience Project.” The study involves understanding the effects of stress on cardio-metabolic health among African Americans in two groups: young adults between 18 and 20 years of age and families with youth 11 to 13. Learn more and help us recruit participants on our HARP page.

FACHS recognized with Inclusive Voices Award

The Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), one of the ongoing research projects of CFR, was recently awarded the “Inclusive Voices Award” from the American Association for Public Opinion Research.  The award recognizes “the important data sets, research, and survey methods that have improved the ability to study complex social phenomena related to understudied populations,” and is presented “to the scholars/researchers, organizations, or institutions who have produced the scholarship (including data collection, methodological approaches, or publications).”

The FACHS project, on-going since 1996, has worked to understand the effect of family processes, neighborhood characteristics, and other contextual factors on African American parents and their children. Congratulations to the entire team from CFR and associates around the country on the recognition of the importance of this work from AAPOR.

New video explains skin-deep resilience

Much of the work of CFR in recent years has focused on the concept of skin-deep resilience–the idea that Black Americans who strive for success through adversity appear resilient on the outside, but underneath, suffer long term, physical consequences from the stress of their striving to succeed. The idea was first labeled in a CFR paper in 2013, and since then, our researchers have deepened their understanding of this phenomenon. In this new, CFR-produced video, Dr. Edith Chen, a professor at Northwestern University and collaborator with CFR, explains the concept succinctly. For more, see our Research Digest on Skin-Deep Resilience.