The University of Rochester announced this week that its Mt. Hope Family Center has received an $8.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health. That’s a grant that will be paid out over the course of five years, and it renews an earlier grant that funds research into child abuse and neglect.
Elizabeth Handley is Mt. Hope’s Director of Research and an associate professor of psychology, and she said that one of the areas funded by this grant is looking at the long term effect of child maltreatment.
“One of the studies is focusing on how exposure to maltreatment when you're a kid can influence your physical and mental health as you become an adult and also influence how you parent your child and the next generation,” said Handley.
Handley said that one aspect of this study is “trying to sort of break those intergenerational cycles.”
She said researchers are “looking at how, having been exposed to maltreatment for some, may lead to being more likely to maltreat their child in the future, but for many, it's not,” said Handley.
Handley also noted that they are “really trying to focus on those people that don't end up perpetuating the cycle of maltreatment, to understand how it is that they showed this resilience so that we can replicate that for other people.”
The renewed grant will also look at getting the research findings into the hands of the people that can use them in the effort to prevent child abuse.
“We’re focusing more on OBGYN , thinking about how to support women when they're pregnant to prevent maltreatment in the first place,” said Handley, who noted that the university is “looking at working with a criminal justice system, expanding access to teachers, primary care providers and so on.”
The grant will also help fund a pilot study that examines whether adding a racial socialization component to trauma treatment will improve outcomes for Black children who experienced maltreatment.
The federal funding will support collaborations across several University and Medical Center departments and community research centers.
The University of Rochester is one of only three academic institutions to get this grant, which is designed to create research that can be used to prevent child maltreatment around the nation.
