Analysis of longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment reports in the United States.

Background: Child maltreatment is a continuous and prevalent issue, and victims of maltreatment often suffer adverse effects well into adulthood. Since child maltreatment rates tend to be clustered geographically and temporally, intervention programs are best implemented at a local level, targeting local risk factors for sustained and effective reduction over time.

Objective: Quantifying geographic variation in child maltreatment rate trajectories can help states identify local risk factors to guide program development and resource allocation.

Reporting of Child Maltreatment During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Southern State in the United States.

Objectives: COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) created an immediate physical barrier between children and professionals such as pediatricians and teachers, who are often first to identify and report signs of child maltreatment. Our objective was to determine how the SAHO in a southern state was associated with reports of child maltreatment and whether this association was modified by sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods: We linked data on reports of child maltreatment from a southern state in the United States from October 1, 2018, through September 30, 2020, to data from the US Census Bureau to obtain data on county-level socioeconomic characteristics.

Global Health Training Collaborations: Lessons Learned and Best Practices.

Interest in global health training experiences among trainees from higher income countries has grown. The Working Group on Ethics Guidelines for Global Health Training (WEIGHT) clarified best practices in 2010 based on expert consensus. These guidelines address both balancing priorities in international partnerships and local sustainability concerns related to short-term experiences.

Psychopharmaceutical Prescription Monitoring for Children in the Child Welfare System.

Objective: Children in the child welfare system are more likely to receive psychotropic medication prescriptions than children in the general population. The authors used prescription- and administrative-level data to quantify variability in prescribing practices among prescribers for the child welfare population in a southern U.S.

Comparison of three models of adverse childhood experiences: Associations with child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is prevalent and confers risk for psychopathology later in life. Approaches to understanding the impact of ACEs on development include the independent risk approach, the Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology (DMAP) distinguishing between threat and deprivation events, and the cumulative risk approach. The present research provides an empirical confirmation of DMAP and a comparison of these three approaches in predicting internalizing and externalizing symptoms in youth.