As we reflect on the third year of the Life Course Intervention Research Network (LCIRN) it is helpful to consider our own developmental trajectory. Are we growing at the right pace and in the right direction? Is there evidence that we are making progress? What are our risk and protective factors, our strengths and weaknesses, and where do we need to do better? Perhaps most importantly, are we moving towards the improved, more equitable child health outcomes we want to achieve? One place to start is to reflect on how well we are aligned with the HRSA-MCHB Strategic Plan paradigm of “Accelerate Upstream Together”.
Accelerate: We know we need to move much faster to address longstanding challenges (e.g., the Black-White gap in infant mortality rates) and emerging challenges (e.g. adolescent mental health). This requires us to shift our research focus from observing and describing problems to finding interventions to solve them. This also means supplementing traditional small-scale randomized controlled trials with studies that address the spread and scaling of effective interventions. We are focusing our research efforts on work that informs the development and testing of new interventions, and on the application of more promising interventions to new populations and new settings. LCIRN members are studying diverse interventions including a family wellbeing program co-located in an early childhood center predominantly serving Black families that aims to improve family mental health; a virtual behavior change intervention that aims to reduce alcohol use in adolescents with ADHD; and an mHealth technology intervention that aims to reduce stress and increase healthfulness of the home food environment with the aim of reducing childhood obesity.
Upstream: Interventions that either prevent the development of health challenges, or address and reverse them as soon as they occur are much more likely to be successful than interventions that are applied only after conditions are well established. The LCIRN’s orientation to a Life Course Health Development (LCHD) approach means that addressing these upstream factors is an integral component of all our work. In addition to prevention interventions delivered early in life, including the sensitive pre-and peri-conception periods, taking a life course approach means finding interventions that don’t just bring about a small improvement in a short-term measured outcome, but actually alter the child’s health trajectory for life. Our network has exciting work underway looking at developmental capabilities that children need to acquire as they grow, and finding ways to intervene to improve them e.g., interventions designed to improve mothers’ reflective functioning capacity and the quality of mother-child relationships that lay the foundation for healthy social-emotional functioning throughout the life course.
Together: The LCIRN is an interdisciplinary group of researchers working in partnership with family and community representatives. Often, our family, youth and community partners and our early-career investigators can see new ways of tackling problems and offer innovative suggestions for interventions. We have begun financially and logistically supporting early and continued stakeholder input in our LCIRN-funded pilot studies and new research node studies, to ensure that approaches are culturally appropriate, practical and likely to be acceptable in a community setting.
As the LCIRN has continued to grow, we’ve placed a particular emphasis on building and supporting a strong, diverse network through fostering new partnerships with Black, Latino, and Indigenous researchers, mentoring junior researchers in our research nodes and Scholars program, and increasing gender parity in our leadership groups.
We are pleased to present these highlights of all the LCIRN has accomplished in year 3, made all the more remarkable by the fact that they have been achieved in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. Know that for each study funded there are several more in development, and many others at even earlier stages of conceptualization. The LCIRN aims to nurture these efforts, finding the best ways to intervene to give all children health for life.
Sincerely, the LCIRN National Coordinating Center.
Neal Halfon, Shirley Russ, Mary Berghaus,
LCIRN Principal Investigator Senior Project Scientist Program Manager
