UD¹s Infant Caregiver Project awarded $3.3 million grant

4 p.m., June 23, 2006--The University of Delaware's Infant Caregiver Project has been awarded a $3.3 million grant by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a 5-year research project focusing on services and skills for high-risk families in Philadelphia.

Mary Dozier, Amy E. du Pont Chair in Child Development and principal investigator of the Infant Caregiver Project, said the study, which will be conducted in conjunction with the Children and Youth Division of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, will provide specialized services for parents who have neglected their children.

“When young children experience early neglect and/or foster care, they are at increased risk for a range of behavioral and biobehavioral problems,” Dozier said. “These neglecting parents rarely have the skills they need for helping children overcome these vulnerabilities.”

Dozier, who has been studying the adjustment of young children in foster care since coming to the University of Delaware in 1993, is internationally recognized for her research on early childhood experience and on disruptions in foster care.

During the study, children will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups and parents will receive a series of 10 home training sessions, with research measures administered before and after the training. The research team will then assess the short and long term outcomes of the intervention, including assessments of attachment, behavior problems and neuroendocrine regulation.

“We expect parents' skills to be enhanced in terms of their sensitivity to children's distress, and in their ability to follow children's lead,” Dozier said. “As the result of these changes, we expect children to develop more trusting relationships with their parents and to develop better behavioral control and more adequate biological regulation.”

Dozier said the Infant Caregiver Project has studied the challenges facing babies in foster care for the past decade and identified several key issues.

“Our intervention specifically targets those issues,” Dozier said. “We were able to make a case to NIMH, the funding agency, that our work was theoretically sound, potentially important and feasible.”

Dozier, who joined the University as an assistant professor of psychology, is known for “translational research''--research that translates basic science to prevention and intervention.

The staff of the Infant Caregiver Project includes research staff, all of whom have extensive experience with the project, and doctoral students. In the front row (from left) are grad student Johanna Bick; Moneick Hancock, project coordinator; grad student Melissa Manni; Mary Dozier, principal investigator; and Elizabeth Peloso, research associate. In the back row (from left) are: grad students Erin Lewis, Damion Grasso and Oliver Lindhiem; and Gail Brogdon, training coordinator.

Dozier is a frequent colloquia speaker, conference presenter and the author or coauthor of more than 60 professional articles. She came to the University in 1993 from Texas, where she worked as an associate professor of psychology at Trinity University and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center.

Dozier is a member of the prevention review committee at the National Institutes of Health and an ad hoc reviewer for other NIH grant review panels. She serves on the editorial board of Attachment and Human Development, Child Maltreatment and Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and is an ad hoc reviewer of a number of professional journals, including Child Development, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Developmental Psychology.

Dozier earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and studies of India and a doctorate in clinical psychology, both at Duke University.

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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