CWRU conference examines "innovations in infancy interventions"

Contact: Susan Griffith, 216-368-1004 or [email protected]

Expectant parents dream of having a healthy baby. Babies need a solid foundation at the start of their growing process to have those wishful dreams come true.

Four nationally recognized child development specialists will provide new information for parents and professionals at an October 15 conference at Case Western Reserve University. "Interventions in Infancy Intervention" runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Strosacker Auditorium. The event is the first conference for CWRU's new Schubert Center for Child Development.

"What we are learning is that children develop the tools early for learning," says Donald K. Freedheim, director of the Schubert Center in CWRU's College of Arts and Sciences. "Critical periods for development happen before a child turns three years old. Early interventions can aid in providing stimulating environments necessary for developing the critical thinking skills, the flexibility, and the creativity needed to live in our complex world."

The following professionals will speak at the conference:

* Marc Bornstein is the senior investigator and head of the Child and Family Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He is the author and editor of more than 10 books on child development, including the four-volume Handbook of Parenting, The Role of Play in the Development of Thought, and the three editions of Development in Infancy. He also has written children's stories and puzzles in the Child's World series.

* David Olds, professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and preventive medicine at the University of Colorado's Health Science Center, has spent more than 20 years studying what works in helping at-risk families. His studies have looked at the impact of home visits by prenatal and postpartum nurses and how these visits affect the pregnancy, the quality of the infant care, the mother's future, and government spending. He has studied families from Elmira, New York; Memphis, Tennessee; and Denver, Colorado.

* Karen Pridham, professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing and Department of Family Medicine, will discuss ways health care workers can develop caregiving plans for parents of underweight infants and children. Her interdisciplinary strategies, currently under research in the Milwaukee health system, show how to relate to these children, types of feeding practices needed, problem-solving strategies, and communication skills for parents and professionals.

* Kathy Sanders-Phillips, director of research and evaluation at the California Endowment, will report on her award-winning work that examines how healthy behaviors and choices, as well as exposure to violence, can lead to certain health outcomes for African-American and Latino women and children. She has written about the psychosocial factors that can affect the health of ethnic minority children. This includes the study of cocaine-exposed infants and sexually abused children. She is a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institute on Drug Abuse and serves on numerous other committee related to drug abuse and AIDS.

Responding to each speaker will be other leaders in the field of child development, according to conference chair Lynn Singer. Singer is an expert on the effects of high risk infant conditions on child development, including maternal drug addiction, and infant prematurity and chronic illness.

"One of the great challenges for child developmentalists is to see whether and by how much we can change the long-term outcomes of at-risk infants," says Singer, CWRU professor of pediatrics and psychiatry in the School of Medicine.

"The presenters are all experts who have attempted to use the best tools of sciences to do that, and who have evaluated the effects of their interventions," she adds.

Freedheim notes that the interventions which these national experts offer dovetail with county efforts to identify children who may be at risk for learning problems when the children enter school. The panelists will offer local professionals new strategies to find these children and intervene before they reach school age.

The conference honors Jane W. Kessler, the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Professor Emerita of Psychology at CWRU, who founded the Mental Development Center and directed it from 1959-79. The center, located at 8100 Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, serves children with special needs through programs that aid in parenting skills and interventions for the children. Kessler also authored Psychopathology of Childhood.

The Schubert Center for Child Development in CWRU's College of Arts and Sciences encourages research in child development and mental health and retardation, and sponsors conferences, lectures, and symposia to disseminate new findings in the field. The center also awards research grants to increase connections between research and community problems.

The center was established with a gift from Helen and Leland Schubert and other generous endowments, including the Dorothea Write Hamilton Endowment Fund and the Cora Unger Brisky Endowment Fund.

Registration is $15 and an additional $10 for continuing education credit. For information, call 216-368-2414 or e-mail [email protected].

-CWRU-