The HBCD Study’s Examination of Early Adversity and Strategies to Recruit/Retain Participants Exposed to Adversity

• In Event: A longitudinal study of child development from pregnancy through first 10 years of life

Abstract

A primary goal of the HBCD study is to examine the influence of early adversity on young children’s brain and behavioral development. Early adversity is a complex construct that addresses multiple contextual factors that impinge upon children’s outcomes, including poverty, racism, trauma, parental mental illness, parental drug use, and other family and environmental hazards (Anda, 2018; Shonkoff, 2010). This presentation will address how we define and operationalize early adversity in the HBCD study, and our strategies for recruiting and retaining affected families.
Specifically, we will examine children’s prenatal and postnatal exposures to a range of adversities. We are collecting in-depth data regarding in-utero and postnatal substance exposures, as well as how children’s environments (e.g., family poverty and food insecurity, parental mental health, family conflict and intimate partner violence, discrimination, parents’ adverse childhood experiences and trauma exposure, environmental toxins) affect their outcomes. In addition to these risk factors, we will explore factors that may protect children against adverse outcomes (e.g., family cohesion, social support).
Finally, we will examine the parenting and caregiving (e.g., child care) children experience, as potential mediators or moderators of their outcomes. Particular attention will be devoted to whether children experience maltreatment. If children are maltreated and potentially are referred to the child welfare system, our goal is to document their child welfare trajectories (e.g., maltreatment substantiation, number of foster care placements), as well as their developmental trajectories while they are involved with the child welfare system. Understanding the challenges of obtaining data from this service sector, we have created a separate workgroup that is consulting with national experts on collecting these data.
Obviously, a study of this breadth and complexity, with a large sample of participants who have experienced adversity, requires carefully planned recruitment and retention strategies. The HBCD Recruitment/Retention workgroup meets biweekly to address these issues, and has developed a range of materials to facilitate sites’ effective recruitment and retention of participants experiencing adversities. HBCD has elected to take a community-engaged approach to recruiting participants, in which we will endeavor to build relationships with participants, direct participants who report specific risk factors to appropriate community-based agencies, and create a welcoming experience for participants who consent to be engaged in the HBCD study. We also have received special funds from NIH to hire “study navigators”, individuals with “lived experience” (e.g., substance use histories) who can help us recruit and retain participants from high-risk backgrounds. Further, each site has a Community Advisory Board, which consists of parents, community members, and professionals with expertise in working with families experiencing adversity, which assists them with recruiting and retention planning.
In sum, this session will identify core features and specific measures of young children’s environments that are critical to include in studies of early adversity. Further, it will delineate strategies that researchers can undertake in order to engage and maintain participants, who contend with a range of adversities in their lives, in a large and complex study of children’s brain and behavioral development.

Author

• Brenda Jones Harden, Columbia University
  Presenting Author