Newsworthy

Recent Investigator Engagements

NC Early Childhood Action Plan | NC DCHHS and NC Child

2019 – 2025

I have had the pleasure to act as an advisor to the statewide Early Childhood Action Plan, which focuses on the health, safety, and learning of children aged 0-8 years. This initiative, executed in February 2019 with benchmarks for 2025, will address the physical health, social and emotional well-being, cognitive development, learning competencies and social environments of young children in North Carolina. I informed the North Carolina’s Early Childhood Councils on science-based methods to achieve the goals of the action plan.

ncIMPACT Initiative | myFutureNC and UNC-CH School of Government

June 2021 – December 2022

I am working with the UNC-CH School of Government on the ncIMPACT Initiative funded in part by myFutureNC. The goal of this project is to increase the number of North Carolinians with postsecondary degrees, credentials, and certificates. As a subcontract of the program, my team has been working on the program from two sides: (1) project evaluation and (2) implementation support of the NC Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives (LEACs). Our project evaluation piece includes measuring design and process outcomes, and conducting statistical analyses. As for implementation support, we will be creating programs that communities can feasibly embed into their practices using evidence-based data. Our approach has three main components:

Equity Framework: Consolidated Framework for Collaborative Research
3-Tiered Socioecological Perspective
1. Project Team
2. Learning Collaboratives
3. Community Context
Developmental Design: Collective Impact Model

FPG-NC General Assembly Meetings

March – May 2021

This spring, I was able to have one-on-one meetings with many members of the NC General Assembly on behalf of FPG Child Development Institute. As the Research and Policy Liaison, I opened these meetings to other investigators at FPG in order to connect legislators to researchers that are experts in early childhood and human development.

From these meetings, I was able to work with NC Representative David Willis on the Transform Five Council and the Early Childhood Caucus, along with NC Senator Jay Chaudhuri. I was also able to inform the Momnibus Act, which addresses the disparity seen in maternal mortality and morbidity rates among black birthing people, with NC Representatives Zack Hawkins and Natalie Murdock. See the full list of meetings below.

May 25 – Rep. David Willis
May 18 – Sen. Jay J. Chaudhuri
May 13 – Sen. Kirk deViere
April 30 – Reps. Zack Hawkins and Natalie Murdock
April 29 – Rep. Jon Hardister
April 19 – Rep. Cecil Brockman
April 16 – Rep. Zack Hawkins
April 14 – Sen. Kevin Corbin
March 26 – Rep. Verla Insko
March 26 – Rep. Shelly Willingham
March 24 – Sen. Kevin Corbin
March 24 – Sen. Valerie Foushee

NCTSN Unseen Costs Paper

April 2021

I collaborated with investigators at the University of Maryland – Baltimore and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network to write the paper “Unseen Costs: The Direct and Indirect Impact of U.S. Immigration Policies on Child and Adolescent Health and Well-Being” about the physical and mental health impacts, as well as the economic and policy concerns, caused by traumatic separation between migrant children and their parents.

Click here to learn more!

FPG Policy Engagement at the NC General Assembly with Amy Auth, UNC Director of State Government Affairs.

September 14, 2020

Amy Auth and I met with the Senate President Pro Tempore’s (Phil Berger)

education policy advisor, Eric Naisbitt, and health policy advisor, Katherine Restrepo, and as well as the House Speaker’s (Tim Moore) Health and Human Services policy advisor, Dylan Finch and education/pre-K policy advisor, Brittany Eller. We also met with Luke MacDonald from the non-partisan Fiscal Research Division. Lastly, we dropped in on key offices who champion legislation for early childhood care and education or youth mental health, including Representative Jeffrey Elmore, Representative Larry Potts, and Representative Donna McDowell White. Our goal was to educate staffers about UNC FPG’s 50 years of experience in empirical research and community practice (Implementation Science and Technical Assistance) on child development with outcomes spanning the life course.

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