news & updates
Fall 2021| Issue 5
New approaches to research on the short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on children's well-being
The COVID-19 pandemic poses real challenges to the aim of closing equity and achievement gaps and ensuring continuous improvement of the health, development, and well-being of all children. Approaching COVID-19 through a life course lens reminds us that there will be both short- and long-term effects, and that interactions between changed individual health attributes and changed family and environmental circumstances will continue to reverberate over time (Settersten et al. 2020). The LCHD model (Halfon 2014) reminds us that health is a developmental process, which is particularly susceptible to both positive and negative exposures and experiences during sensitive periods of health development.

In 2020 LCIRN members met together with other maternal and child health researchers and stakeholders to develop a research agenda to better understand the short- and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s healthy development.
We are excited that the results of this effort have recently been published in a summary article in Maternal and Child Health Journal and a full report is available on our website. Participants identified key research questions at the individual, family, community, schools, and systems levels, focused especially on the less-studied secondary impacts of the pandemic including children’s development and mental health.
Just as important as what we research, is how we do the research. Recommendations for enacting the COVID-19 MCH Research Agenda include using participatory research methods, seeking out transformative approaches, activating new funding streams, and strengthening data systems that might better measure child well-being across multiple domains. One conclusion from this highly interactive and iterative process, is that researchers, policy makers, health systems, funders, and research institutions all have a role to play in transforming the research landscape to better serve children and families.

The pandemic of 2019-2020 might ultimately be remembered not just for its serious health impacts and social disruptions but as the catalyst for change. The research agenda points to a need for new approaches to research and practice that can promote health equity, re-fashioning systems of care to support optimal health development trajectories in early life and throughout the life course. Creative uses of new technology, and a willingness to work together in new ways to enact this research agenda, hold promise for novel solutions to both the threats posed by COVID-19 and to long-standing challenges to well-being for all children.
Introducing the
Youth Justice Node!

Co-led by Elizabeth Barnert (Pediatrics) and Laura Abrams (Social Welfare) at UCLA, the mission of the Youth Justice Node is to put forward bold future-oriented thinking about policies and practices impacting youth justice and health development with the goal of improving youth wellbeing. The node will collectively visualize the following future oriented questions:

  •  What can be gained from a Life Course Health Development (LCHD) approach for the field of youth justice?
  • What does a future look like without youth jails?
  • What does a future look like with racial equity?
  • What does a future look like where children in distress are supported instead of punished?
  • How can the core principles of health development, unfolding, complexity, timing, plasticity, thriving, and harmony guide strategic policy and practice interventions?

The Youth Justice Node aims to serve as a hub to coordinate and expand the research on innovative, community-led approaches and priorities for youth justice. The node hopes to create a network of partnerships between community innovators and researchers to develop bodies of evidence on the efficacy, comparative benefits, and scalability of grassroots visions for youth justice.

The node, which launched in summer 2021, has already been busy applying the LCHD framework to youth justice, and contributed a paper on the topic to the Pediatrics Supplement “Advancing Life Course Intervention Research” which will be released in May 2022. Some other related projects Liz and Laura have been working on include:
  • A joint statement on instituting a minimum age of jurisdiction for juvenile justice involvement. The statement advocates for a developmentally appropriate justice system that incorporates what we now know about early brain development and ensures that children have access to trauma-informed supportive health and social services. The statement was endorsed by American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), American Council for School Social Work (ACSSW), American Psychological Association (APA), Clinical Social Work Association (CSWA), National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM).

 

The Youth Justice node is currently in development and looking for partners– if you are interested in collaborating with us, contact node coordinator Julia Lesnick (julialesnick@ucla.edu)
Network Updates

Adam Schickedanz, leader of the Adversity Adaptation and Resilience Node, is one of three editors of a special Supplement to the Journal Academic Pediatrics published this month entitled “Child Poverty and Health 2021: addressing Equity and Economic Justice.” This collection of 21 papers explores ways in which children’s health and development is particularly vulnerable to poverty and urges action through policy and program changes that take new approaches to preventing childhood poverty and mitigating its lifelong effects.

Adam also co-authored the supplement paper on medical-financial partnerships which explores their potential role in antipoverty medicine. The supplement includes a very important section devoted to equity which considers the intersection of structural racism, geography, poverty and health.

Please check out the whole supplement which is available open access online and will be of great interest to LCIRN members.

In the September issue of Academic Pediatrics, Adam Schickedanz and LCIRN Project Director Neal Halfon co-authored a paper with Abigail Arons that considers how the Life Course Health Development (LCHD) Framework can be used to incorporate new evidence from life course science into Medicaid. This approach holds great potential for states to redesign their Medicaid programs with the aim of achieving lifelong health improvement for Medicaid clients. Five elements of this new approach include targeting prevention to sensitive periods; prioritizing intervention on social exposures; maximizing longitudinal continuity in coverage and service delivery; building technological systems


Emily Ozer, Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) node leader and co-Director of i4y – innovations for youth, published a brief with Penn State on opportunities to strengthen the impact of social and emotional learning through youth-led participatory action research

Mark Feinberg, leader of the Family Health Development node, recently published 3 papers on the impacts of COVID-19 on family functioning:
Black Babies Awareness Month
Dr. Iheoma Iruka, LCIRN member and founder of the Equity Research Action Coalition at UNC, recently published a report with Child Trends on Black Parents and Their Babies: Attending to the first 1,000 days. The report examines how Black families with babies are faring in the face of two pandemics – COVID-19 and racism.

“The first years of life set the foundation for children’s healthy development and school and life success. Early adversity can change the timing of critical periods of brain development and healthy development. Access to basic resources may reduce families’ experiences of chronic stress and also ensure children are getting access to nutritional, psychosocial, and health care needed for healthy development. Unfortunately, systemic racism and interpersonal experiences of discrimination can influence the health and well-being of both children and adults in multiple and complex ways.”

In an accompanying op-ed promoting investments in supporting Black babies and families, Dr. Iruka calls for immediate actions that:

  1. Protect Black babies and their families from racism, discrimination, and material hardship to ensure babies thrive throughout their life course. 
  2. Promote economic security, health, and access to early care and education opportunities, which are essential to support healthy development and mitigate against racism, discrimination, and bias.
  3. Preserve Black families and their babies’ cultural identity in the early years as they are essential building blocks, as are reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Dr. Iruka implores us to act now as “we don’t have another 1,000 days to spare. We need… to protect, promote, and preserve the health, wealth, and educational well-being of Black babies.”

To see more from Black Babies Awareness Month (November 2021), check out the hashtag #BlackBabiesMatter on Twitter and follow @IheomaIruka
LIFE COURSE INTERVENTION RESEARCH NETWORK | lcirn.ucla.edu
This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under award UA6MC32492, the Life Course Intervention Research Network. The information, content, and/or conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS, or the US Government. any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS, or the US Government.