Biography

Kenneth A. Dodge is the President of the Society for Research in Child Development and the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also the founding and emeritus director of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy. Ken studies the development of aggressive behavior in children and families. His work provides a model for understanding how early experiences of trauma and adversity lead some young children to become defensive in processing social information, which leads them to engage in aggressive behavior and catalyzes a life course of costly outcomes. He is now crafting and testing public policies and community interventions such as Family Connects to enhance opportunities and outcomes for populations of families with young children and to eliminate disparities across groups. Ken is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Presidential Address: Growing Opportunities for Young Children and Eliminating Disparities Through a Universal System of Care

Session Type: Presidential Address

Abstract

In spite of enormous investment of financial resources, population indicators of early child behavioral development in the United States lag behind much of the world, both in overall status of young children and in disparities across income and race groups. Prospective studies show that families giving birth have diverse needs, ranging from substance abuse intervention to child care guidance, that go unmet because there is no system in place to support them. As a result, families are on their own, too many children enter kindergarten ill-prepared to learn, and disparities in opportunities and outcomes are growing wider. In this lecture, I suggest that what is needed is a comprehensive system of primary psychosocial care that mimics primary health care. I report studies of population-level steps toward this system. One approach is Family Connects (FC), through which every birthing family in a community is offered short-term postnatal nurse home visits to assess family-specific needs, offer guidance, and connect the family with tailored community resources. Two randomized controlled trials and a field quasi-experiment with over 6,000 births show that over 80 percent of all birthing families voluntarily accept the offer to participate, over 90 percent report at least one unmet need, and over 80 percent successfully connect with community resources when offered. At follow up at age 60 months, compared with controls, families randomly assigned to FC have about one third fewer emergency department visits and one third fewer investigated reports of child abuse, and race disparities in these outcomes shrink. I conclude with discussion of how to bring developmental science to bear on improving outcomes for all children.

Sub Unit

• Special Events

Speaker

• Kenneth A Dodge, Duke University