Network News
Child Maltreatment as a Root Cause of Mortality Disparities
Aug 23, 2016Idan Shelav, assistant professor of biobehavioral health, Christine Heim, professor of biobehavioral Health, Jennie Noll, Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies, recently published an editorial article on new findings regarding the correlation between child abuse and reduced longevity. The article opens with a list of issues evidenced and generally accepted to be caused in part by childhood maltreatment that includes immediate physical injuries, mental and psychological health disorders, and even chronic illnesses, like cancer and heart disease. That facing abuse early in life may also mean shaving years off the end of it – and, moreover, only in women – is a new finding. The study, conducted by Edith Chen, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, and colleagues revisited questionnaires from 1995 and 1996 on self-reported early emotional and physical abuse. They compared findings with the National Death Index to see who survived the 20-year follow-up period and noticed a striking trend among the female participants. Their results show women who reported emotional abuse in childhood were 22 percent more likely to die from the time they filled out the survey. The percentage increases with the graveness of the maltreatment, capping at 58 percent for severe physical abuse. According to Shelav, Heim, and Noll, these results raise “important questions about underlying mechanisms and possible points of intervention. “There may be several reasons for this sex specificity that have yet to be explored,” the professors continue in their editorial. “From an evolutionary, life-history perspective, organisms facing risks that could reduce their changes of surviving to reproductive age should, if possible, accelerate their development.” Such rapid growth is taxing, but when the opportunity to pass on its genes is jeopardized, according to this theory, the female body might be willing to sacrifice personal long-term health. Also discussed is the possibility that men and women cope with stress in different ways. While the study looked at only stunted mortality and not the cause of death – implying the necessity for further research – Shelav, Heim, and Noll consider it appropriate grounds to call for “rigorous science to mobilize public investment in prevention and treatment.” With trauma-calculating adversity scores, for example, they say we can work towards monitoring stress and providing a safer atmosphere for the individual and the entire family. The editorial by Shelav, Heim, and Noll is also referenced in an NPR article.
Network director addresses the UK child welfare system
Jun 24, 2016Across the pond, Jennie Noll’s message of academia to combat and prevent child maltreatment is being heard and gaining traction. Noll, director of Penn State's Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies, recently attended the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children's (NSPCC) Rebuilding Childhood Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, to present two plenary addresses to conference attendees. Noll’s first presentation was centered on her research regarding the public health impact of child maltreatment, the high costs associated with maltreatment and the various policy activities in which she has been engaged over the past three years. In a second session, Noll presented the model for the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network as an academic vehicle to impact policy. She showcased the “bridge to policy” model that the Network currently employs in order to make tangible legislative changes using research, data and in-depth analyses. This model provides an outline for research to be translated into economic and public health messages that are able to reach and resonate with policymakers. Attendees of the NSPCC event included healthcare providers, academics and the exact policymakers that the “bridge” model tries to reach, including John Swinney, the Scottish Parliament’s deputy first minister, who spoke about pressing issues and challenges for the UK child welfare system. Since the conference, Noll and her team of faculty have continued to interact with the United Kingdom’s child welfare system in a number of ways. Noll has worked with the office of the Deputy First Minister to estimate public health costs and large-scale economic impacts of maltreatment for the UK. Additionally, Noll and her team have exchanged administrative data with the UK and will soon facilitate the application of predictive analytics across the child welfare systems of both the U.S. and the UK. Network faculty will be working directly with researchers at the University of Glasgow on this project. According to Noll, the data that has been exchanged helps researchers understand how the arm of maltreatment extends into the allocation of other government resources and programs. “These analytics allow us to predict which other public systems — including juvenile justice and public assistance, like Medicaid — also touch children who are involved in child welfare,” said Noll. “This helps us communicate the economic impact of child maltreatment on a country-wide scale.” The collaboration and NSPCC presentation are among a series of international engagements that Noll has had over the past few years. She has also spoken at the World Health Summit in Berlin and to the Japanese Delegation of Child Welfare. The Child Maltreatment Solutions Network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the Network was launched in Fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. For more information on the Network, please visit here.
Network's Bieschke named interim dean of Schreyer Honors College
May 26, 2016Penn State has named Kathleen J. Bieschke, head of the Department of Education Psychology, Counseling and Special Education, as interim dean of the Schreyer Honors College, effective June 1. “Kathy is an experienced administrator, engaged teacher and accomplished researcher, with a long history of service to the College of Education and the University,” said Penn State Executive Vice President and Provost Nicholas Jones. “I have every confidence she will provide outstanding leadership for the honors college as we move forward through this transition.” Bieschke, professor of education (counseling psychology), joined Penn State’s faculty in 1991. She served as an Administrative Fellow in the Provost’s Office for the 2012-13 academic year. As head of the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education (EPCSE), Bieschke leads a faculty of 53 and staff of five, and oversees resident and world campus instruction for undergraduate and graduate students in department programs, and the CEDAR Clinic. In addition, Bieschke is professor-in-charge for the Child Maltreatment and Advocacy Studies minor, launched in 2015, and its associated courses. She currently serves as chair of the Assessment Committee for the University’s Council on Engaged Scholarship, as well as EPCSE’s Diversity and Climate Enhancement Committee. She also is a member of Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and the Graduate School’s Special Committee for Outcomes, Assessment and Performance Enhancement. She currently serves as chair of the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation. Bieschke has published extensively over her career, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. She is a member of the executive team for the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, a collaborative practice-research network comprised of more than 350 college counseling centers. Her research interests focus on the delivery of services to marginalized populations and the education and training of professional psychologists. She replaces Christian Brady, who announced May 17 that he is stepping down. A national search will begin soon to find a permanent replacement. Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College enrolls approximately 1,800 students across all Penn State locations and offers more than 200 honors-level courses.
Child sex-abuse law reform would save kids in the future
May 13, 2016The recent show of support for the Child Victims Act that would eliminate time limits for the prosecution of child sexual abuse in the State of New York is to be heralded.
Abstinence may not be the best policy for avoiding online risk
May 12, 2016The online world is full of risky situations for teens, but allowing them to gradually build their own coping strategies may be a better parental strategy than forbidding internet use, according to a team of researchers. The researchers, who monitored web-based diaries of a group of 68 teen internet users during the two-month study, said the teens reported they encountered 207 risky events, including sexual solicitations and online harassment, said Pamela Wisniewski, formerly a post-doctoral scholar in information sciences and technology, Penn State, and currently an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Central Florida. However, in many cases, teens were able to resolve the issues on their own. While the media may continue to focus on cases of online risk that had tragic consequences, the diary entries showed that many teens routinely handle some risky situations on their own. "Focusing on the more positive interactions dealing with online risk flips this debate on its head and turns the conversation from one of parents trying to keep their teens safe to maybe there's more we can do to teach teens how to keep themselves safe," said Wisniewski. Teens, in fact, did not see much of a difference between online risks and the risks they encounter in real-life social settings, she added. "As adults we see these online situations as problems, as negative risk experiences, but teens see them as par-for-the-course experiences," said Wisniewski. The researchers suggest that teens may be better off gradually acclimating to online risk and building resilience by overcoming lower risk situations, rather than avoiding exposure to risks, which is a more commonly recommended tactic today. Parents and caretakers can act as guides in the process. "In the past, we tended to focus on the higher risk events, not the medium risk events, but I think there's a missed opportunity for learning some of the coping strategies that teens use in lower risk situations," said Wisniewski. "So, if they are exposed to a higher risk event, they may be able to exercise some of the skills they already learned." She added that avoiding the internet is not a realistic option for most teens. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 92 percent of teens have access to the internet daily and 89 percent have at least one active social media account. The researchers, who present their findings at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems today (May 11), recruited 68 teens, ages 13- to 17-years old, to enter first-hand accounts of their online experiences in a web-based diary. The experiences were divided into four risk categories: information breaches, online harassment, sexual solicitations and exposure to explicit content. Of the 207 events the teens entered into their diaries as risky encounters, there were 119 reports of exposure to explicit content, 31 information breaches, 29 sexual solicitations and 28 incidents of online harassment. Wisniewski worked with Heng Xu, associate professor, Mary Beth Rosson, professor and associate dean, and John M. Carroll, distinguished professor, all of information sciences and technology, and Daniel F. Perkins, professor of family and youth resiliency and policy, all of Penn State. The National Science Foundation supported this work.
Registration now open for Penn State’s Fifth Annual Child Protection Conference
May 12, 2016One out of every four students in U.S. schools has been exposed to a traumatic event that can affect their learning and behavior, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network aims to help those working with children identify and respond to the unique challenges of childhood trauma in schools with its fifth annual conference, “Trauma Informed Schools: How child maltreatment prevention, detection, and intervention can be integrated into the school-setting”, to be held Oct. 10-11 at the Nittany Lion Inn on Penn State’s University Park campus. According to Jennie Noll, Network director and professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, children who experience the trauma of maltreatment in the classroom often have difficulties outside of it as well. “These challenges can negatively affect educational well-being and often persist over the long-term, creating unnecessary barriers to learning and independence.” The goal of the conference is to bring together key members of the research, educational, and child welfare communities in order to create a unified dialog about how schools can more effectively move toward a coordinated, multifaceted response to traumatic events that take place in schools. Conference sessions will include child welfare legislation changes and school-based maltreatment prevention efforts, the behavioral and developmental impact of trauma, policies to improve education efforts, mandated reporter trainings, and how community providers, child advocates, and schools can work together to support teachers and improve the educational experience for children who have been maltreated. The conference will conclude with a panel discussion focused on identifying the next essential steps in research, training and policy that will move the field forward to support administrators and teachers in promoting child well-being and creating enriched educational environments for students who have experienced trauma. For more information about the conference and to register, go to http://protectchildren.psu.edu/content/2016-conference. The Child Maltreatment Solutions Network was created to advance Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the Network was launched in Fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is a part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. For more information on the Network, please visit protectchildren.psu.edu.
Penn State project to help at-risk youth conquer chronic stress
May 6, 2016Stress can cause numerous physical and mental health problems, but for children, stress from problems such as discrimination or poverty are especially harmful because children have little control over these problems. Fortunately, a Penn State intervention program is being expanded for youth facing chronic stress. Building a Strong Identity and Coping Skills (BaSICS) is a program developed by the Penn State CaRES Lab designed to teach low-income and minority preadolescent youth healthy ways of coping with stress and divert them from negative outcomes. Martha Wadsworth, director of the CaRES Lab and associate professor of psychology, and her research team were recently awarded a $1.1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to expand and evaluate the effectiveness of the BaSICS program. If the team is successful in achieving its goals in the first two years of the project, it will receive an additional $1.7 million from NIMH for the second phase. According to Wadsworth, the BaSICS program began as a pilot study with 50 youth three years ago in a Harrisburg community marked by persistent poverty, violence, and poorly funded schools. It was introduced as part of the Harrisburg Academy summer program for youth and now includes sessions during the school year. “Children living in these conditions are exposed to toxic stress, which can set them on a trajectory for lifelong health problems, both mental and physical,” said Wadsworth. “Their brains and bodies are still developing, so toxic stress can ‘get under the skin’ and leave children vulnerable to developing problems such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse, along with physical health complications such as asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.” According to Wadsworth, BaSICS is the first intervention program to integrate individual and collective coping skills training and positive identity development with the goal of promoting positive youth development. The program, aimed at children ages 10 to 12, is eight weeks long and community-based, taking place at youth-serving agencies in the children’s neighborhoods. “It is a prevention program designed to give these at-risk kids the tools they need to manage stressful situations and grow strong minds and bodies," she said. "We teach kids coping and problem solving skills, as well as how to join with others in their community to take social action. The children utilize their new skills and capacities to work towards making their little corner of the world a little safer, cleaner, or more beautiful.” Wadsworth explained the program is not just about helping children learn how to stay calm when they are upset. Rather, BaSICS incorporates insights from psychotherapy and empowerment theory and validates children’s natural emotional responses to unfairness and injustice. “We acknowledge that it is normal to feel angry and frustrated in the face of discrimination and violence, and emphasize that what they do about these feelings is important and can lead to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outcomes," she said. "We teach them an array of skills to take positive action instead of anti-social action in response to the stressful events they encounter every day.” The BaSICS program also helps kids explore their cultural and ethnic identities so that they can begin the task of figuring out who they are, where they came from, and where they are headed in the future. “We have kids in the group identify a problem or a need in their community and work together to come up with a solution,” Wadsworth said. “These activities help meet a child’s fundamental human need for belonging, purpose, and agency.” Starting in the fall of 2016, Wadsworth and her team will recruit 150 fifth- and sixth-graders from the Harrisburg area to participate in the new grant-funded project, which will be held after school in biweekly, eight-week sessions throughout the school year. Half of the children will be randomly assigned to participate in BaSICS and the other half of the children will not receive the intervention. According to Wadsworth, both groups of children will participate in testing before the intervention starts, post-testing after completion of the program, and then follow-up testing six and 12 months later to see how long the changes are retained. In addition to assessing coping skill acquisition and mental health problems, the team will measure the children’s salivary cortisol levels in response to a stressful task in the lab. “Cortisol is the ‘stress hormone’ produced by the adrenal glands, which helps regulate the body’s response to stress. Moderate cortisol responses to stress are beneficial, but cortisol levels that are very high or very low signal that their stress response system is not operating properly,” Wadsworth explained. The results from the pilot study are promising, and Wadsworth and her team are excited to expand the program. “In the pilot study, we observed positive changes in how the youth coped with stress and in their psychological symptoms. “We also found that a large proportion of the 50 children in the program had blunted cortisol levels, meaning that their bodies were not mounting a physiologic response to something that should stress them out,” said Wadsworth. “Blunted cortisol reactivity is not good — it is often found in children with severe depression and delinquent behavior. The remaining children in the pilot study tended to have exaggerated cortisol levels, which are generally associated with poor outcomes as well — often predicting anxiety and post traumatic stress symptoms and disorders.” Wadsworth and her team found that after participating in BaSICS, the children showed improved coping skills, reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression, and remarkably, improved cortisol patterns — the children with blunted cortisol levels were able to develop better physiologic responses to stress than before, whereas the children with exaggerated cortisol patterns were able to regulate themselves better following the stressor. Wadsworth hopes that the results of this large-scale study will confirm their promising preliminary findings that psychosocial intervention can affect not only children’s mental health, but can also impact how stress affects their bodies. “These findings will help us develop powerful interventions for kids facing toxic stress — powerful enough to help in our efforts to combat income- and race-based health disparities,” she said. Seed funding for this project was provided by Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute as well as the Africana Research Center and the Justice Center for Research. Other Penn State researchers on the project are Mark Feinberg, professor of health and human development and director of the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center; Jarl Ahlkvist, lecturer in sociology and criminology; Gina Brelsford, associate professor of psychology; and Damon Jones, senior research associate in the Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center.
Awareness event focuses on sex trafficking prevention and education
Apr 20, 2016Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, along with the Colleges of Information and Science Technology (IST), Communications and Nursing, recently hosted "Sex Trafficking: Vulnerabilities and Solutions," a half-day awareness event dedicated to sex trafficking prevention and education. The event, held in the Founder’s Room of the Bryce Jordan Center on the University Park campus, covered issues and topics from across the trafficking spectrum, including presentations by trafficking researchers, legislators, activists, judges and survivors of this heinous crime. Penn State students, faculty and staff, along with professionals across the Commonwealth, listened to and participated in discussions regarding sex trafficking, with a special focus on how the crime affects minors. The event opened with a trailer of “The Turn Out,” a fiction film on trafficking produced by Pearl Gluck, assistant professor of film and video in the College of Communications. Gluck’s film addresses the issue of sex trafficking at truck stops and the possibility of bystander intervention. The film provided attendees a look into one aspect of the sex trade while setting the stage for the day’s event. Network Director and Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Jennie Noll, who presented long-term research on the underlying causes of child sex trafficking, said that the unprecedented access that today’s minors have to the Internet makes them more easily targeted by predators and traffickers, locally and on a grander scale. “The vulnerabilities that these kids are engaging in are fertile ground for perpetrators,” Noll said. Noll’s study focused on the link between teens’ Internet usage and susceptibility to involvement in sex trafficking. She presented Facebook profiles of the young girls participating in her longitudinal study and pointed out what traffickers look for when zeroing in on new victims. Things like age-inappropriate and sexually explicit language, revealing photos and posts about instability at home were common themes in the subjects that Noll deemed "high-risk." The Internet’s vast presence in trafficking reaches far beyond the recruitment point, to the actual buying and selling of illegal sex acts with minors. Student researchers from the College of IST, along with IST Associate Dean Peter Forster, discussed the ways in which current practices fall short and allow illicit trafficking sites like Backpage.com to continue, while feeding victims of trafficking into the criminal justice system. Mike Bartley of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and retired FBI agent, discussed how exploitation and even victim brainwashing play into a victim’s fear and inability to leave a captor. He added that, presently, there is no way of knowing how many children on NCMEC’s list are involved in sex trafficking. U.S. Congressman Charles Dent spoke on the legalities that are currently in play in combating the growing issue of sex trafficking, such as his push for the Secure Our Skies Act, which, if enacted, would require airline personnel to receive training and report on any suspected human trafficking they encountered while working and the United States’ collaboration with Europe to stop this disturbing trend globally. “I’m very pleased about some of these efforts,” Dent said. “We are not finished with our actions on this. This is just the beginning.” While laws and in-depth analyses are essential to understand and ultimately end sex trafficking, the event also incorporated an unfiltered human element to this very real issue. Sex trafficking survivors Barbara Freeman and Jennifer Kempton detailed their personal accounts of being coerced into and escaping the sex trade industry. Freeman and Kempton explained the abuses, addictions, relationships and manipulations that led them to being trafficked, and the brutal reality that became their lives for years. Both women had been raped multiple times, were kept exhausted and malnourished by pimps and were worn-down and abused, physically and emotionally. Freeman was able to change her life with help from religion and Judge Kevin G. Sasinoski of Changing Actions to Change Habits (CATCH) Court. “Life is about second chances, third chances, twenty-fifth chances,” said Sasinoski at the Network event. “I’d like to think that all of us have all had a second or third or fourth chance at something.” Kempton closely escaped death before her second chance. After a violent and horrific rape, she attempted suicide. It failed and, for her, that was the turning point. “I started a very long process of trying to heal and restore my life,” she said. Kempton now runs a nonprofit that pays for the removal of "branding" tattoos for survivors of trafficking. Freeman also is running a nonprofit to help women who are currently on the street, and is a motivational speaker. Both women made one thing very clear: Trafficking is a pervasive, close-to-home issue that can impact anyone at any time. “It’s in your backyard. Anywhere there’s a truck stop, anywhere there’s the internet, anywhere there’s a hotel, it’s happening,” said Kempton. “You can’t just walk out the door and say you don’t know, so what are you going to do about it?”
Clues to child abuse: Dr. Lori Frasier on the front line of new training
Apr 15, 2016“If it’s never on your radar screen, you’re never going to see it.” That’s the philosophy that drives Dr. Lori Frasier in her efforts to better train pediatricians and other clinicians to be aware of clues that might suggest abuse. Frasier is director of the Penn State Center for the Protection of Children, division chief of child abuse pediatrics at Penn State Children’s Hospital, and is board-certified in child abuse pediatrics. She will take her expertise statewide as she partners with the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance to provide new, state-mandated training of medically licensed professionals that will hopefully lead to better reporting of suspected child abuse. In 2014, 30 children died from abuse. “It’s difficult in that frontline role as the pediatrician, especially if you know the family and have seen them over and over again,” Frasier said. “If you’re not thinking about possible clues of abuse, you’re never going to see it.” The state’s Department of Human Services recently awarded the alliance a five-year, $2.5 million contract to provide expanded training in recognizing and reporting child abuse for mandated reporters across Pennsylvania. Frasier will play a key role by developing the clinical training portion that supplements the face-to-face training. Read more about Frasier and this project in this Penn State Medicine article.
The Medical Minute: Knowing whether it’s abuse and how to respond
Apr 14, 2016What do you do when you’re out in public and you witness what you believe to be child abuse? The standard suggestions are to: start a conversation with the adult to direct attention away from the child. talk to the child to refocus his or her energy. look for an opportunity to praise the parent or child. offer assistance. avoid negative remarks or looks. In many situations, those are easier said than done. According to Dr. Lori Frasier, director of the Center for the Protection of Children at Penn State Children’s Hospital, it’s a judgment call. “I think it's hard because people might be fearful to intervene,” Frasier said. “It does take a special person to take action when they see something that they think might be abuse. It’s important to consider that if someone is doing something like this in public and they don't care who sees them, what will they do in the privacy of their own home? It could be worse.” What is — and isn’t — abuse? Frasier said it’s hard to know what constitutes abuse. “What is abusive to one person may not be to another,” Frasier said. The law states that child abuse is subjecting a child to bodily injury, neglect or sexual abuse. Some examples include shaking, hitting, kicking, punching or burning a child. “The law states that you must have a reasonable suspicion of abuse in order to report it,” Frasier said. “You don't have to know for sure.” While physical abuse, like hitting or kicking, is easy to recognize, verbal abuse, like berating, screaming or threatening, can be a gray area. When should you call ChildLine or 911? ChildLine (1-800-932-0313) is available 24 hours a day to accept calls regarding suspected child abuse from mandated reporters as well as the general public in Pennsylvania. Each call is answered by a trained specialist who determines the most appropriate course of action. Callers are asked to provide the child’s name, location and name of the offender. ChildLine then contacts Child Protective Services in the appropriate area, which must respond within 24 hours. “Child and Family Services have to have a way to find out who a child is,” Frasier said. “If you think a child is at risk and needs an immediate response, call the police.” Try to intervene If you are able to intervene, try not to be aggressive or critical, which could put you at risk. "In such a moment, a parent is under great stress and they may not take it well if someone tells them they’re doing something wrong," Frasier said. If you are able to assess the situation and can determine the cause of the stress, you may be able to offer help. Because of distrust of strangers, the offer may be met negatively. Be willing to step back if there is a poor response. Sharing your own struggles of parenthood might be a better approach. "It's important to be relatable to the person; that you're not there to judge them; you've been in their shoes. We've all been in those shoes when we get frustrated," she said. Frasier believes we all have an obligation to protect children. "You don't want to think it's none of your business and then a couple of days later realize that that same child you were worried about has been killed or seriously injured," she said. Frasier had a case where a bystander in Wal-Mart alerted security of a child covered in bruises. The guard called police. "They didn't confront the family directly, but they felt the situation looked scary enough that they needed to alert somebody," she said, noting their suspicions were correct. "It is everybody's business. To not intervene is a mistake," Frasier said. Learn more: Center for the Protection of Children at Penn State Children’s Hospital Pennsylvania Department of Human Services: ChildLine Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance: Defining abuse and neglect Clues to child abuse: Dr. Lori Frasier on the frontline of new training (Penn State Medicine) The Medical Minute is a weekly health news feature produced by Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Articles feature the expertise of faculty physicians and staff, and are designed to offer timely, relevant health information of interest to a broad audience.