Publications by authors named "Robert Ammerman"

Article Synopsis
  • Children in foster care face increased behavior problems due to trauma and social changes, which can lead to placement disruptions if not addressed properly.
  • This study tests the effectiveness of the Chicago Parent Program adapted for foster caregivers (CPP-FC), aimed at improving caregiver stress, parenting skills, child behaviors, and placement stability.
  • 300 caregivers will be involved, with half receiving the CPP-FC intervention and the other half receiving usual care, and various assessments will be conducted to measure the program's impact on behaviors and placements over time.*
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Epigenetic clocks are emerging as tools for assessing acceleration and deceleration of biological age during childhood. Maternal depression during pregnancy may affect the biological aging of offspring and related development. In a low-income cohort of mother-child dyads, we investigated the relationship between prenatal maternal depressive symptoms and infant epigenetic age residuals, which represent the deviation (acceleration or deceleration) that exists between predicted biological age and chronological age.

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Objective: Pediatric primary care is a promising setting in which to deliver preventive behavioral health services to young children and their families. Integrated behavioral health care models typically emphasize treatment rather than prevention. This pilot study examined the efficacy of an integrated behavioral health preventive (IBH-P) intervention delivered by psychologists and focused on supporting parenting in low-income mothers of infants as part of well-child visits in the first 6 months of life.

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Importance: Dysfunctional patterns of behavior during infancy can predict the emergence of mental health disorders later in childhood. The Baby Pediatric Symptom Checklist (BPSC) can identify indicators of behavioral disorders among children aged 0 to 18 months. Understanding the association of early health-related social needs (HRSNs) with poor infant behavioral functioning can inform interventions to promote early childhood mental well-being.

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(1) Introduction: Epigenetic changes have been proposed as a biologic link between in-utero exposure to maternal smoking and health outcomes. Therefore, we examined if in-utero exposure to maternal smoking was associated with infant DNA methylation (DNAm) of cytosine-phosphate-guanine dinucleotides (CpG sites) in the arginine vasopressin receptor 1A gene. The gene encodes a receptor that interacts with the arginine vasopressin hormone and may influence physiological stress regulation, blood pressure, and child development.

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Importance: Screening of behavior problems in young children in pediatric primary care is essential to timely intervention and optimizing trajectories for social-emotional development. Identifying differential behavior problem trajectories provides guidance for tailoring prevention and treatment.

Objective: To identify trajectories of behavior problems in children 2 to 6 years of age screened in pediatric primary care.

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Background: Young adults with a history of foster care have higher risk for substance use disorders. Social systems can deliver substance use prevention to youth; however, the timing of intervention delivery and how needs differ for youth in foster care are unclear.

Objective: To compare initiation and rates of substance use among adolescents in foster care to demographically similar adolescents never in foster care as identified by the healthcare system, and identify factors associated with increased substance use.

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A qualitative, community-engaged assessment was conducted to identify needs and priorities for infant obesity prevention programs among mothers participating in home visiting programs. Thirty-two stakeholders (i.e.

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This review summarizes the developmental epidemiology of childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders. It discusses the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, sex differences, longitudinal course, and stability of anxiety disorders in addition to recurrence and remission. The trajectory of anxiety disorders-whether homotypic (ie, the same anxiety disorder persists over time) or heterotypic (ie, an anxiety disorder shifts to a different diagnosis over time) is discussed with regard to social, generalized, and separation anxiety disorders as well as specific phobia, and panic disorder.

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The purpose of this study was to use qualitative interviews to ascertain the perspective of pediatric primary care providers on the implementation of Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) as provided by psychologists within an expanded HealthySteps™ model, and with a particular focus on prevention of behavioral health symptoms in the first five years. A semi-structured interview guide was used to assess medical providers' perceptions of behavioral health integration into their primary care clinics. A conventional qualitative content analysis approach was utilized to identify patterns of meaning across qualitative interviews.

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Between 2012 and 2017,  = 2814 youth between the ages of 4 and 20 were in child protective services (CPS) custody in Hamilton County, Ohio, and placed in out-of-home care. Child welfare administrative records were extracted and linked to electronic health records for all encounters at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, with  = 2787 (99.1%) of records successfully linked prior to de-identifying the data for research purposes.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Research shows that home visiting programs might help reduce these risks, but there is limited data on their enrollment among women with a history in out-of-home care.
  • * A study found that while these women were referred to home visiting programs more often, they had similar enrollment rates but participated for shorter periods and had fewer visits than those who were never in out-of-home care, indicating challenges in program engagement.
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Background: Children in foster care experience poor health and high healthcare use. Child welfare agencies frequently require healthcare visits when children enter foster care; subsequent placement changes also disrupt healthcare. Studies of healthcare use have not accounted for placement changes.

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Maternal childhood adversity and trauma may elicit biological changes that impact the next generation through epigenetic responses measured in DNA methylation (DNAm). These epigenetic associations could be modified by the early postnatal environment through protective factors, such as early childhood home visiting (HV) programs that aim to mitigate deleterious intergenerational effects of adversity. In a cohort of 53 mother-child pairs recruited in 2015-2016 for the Pregnancy and Infant Development Study (Cincinnati, Ohio), we examined the association between maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and neonatal DNAm in the secretogranin V gene (SCG5), which is important in neuroendocrine function.

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The goal of creating evidence-based programs is to scale them at sufficient breadth to support population-level improvements in critical outcomes. However, this promise is challenging to fulfill. One of the biggest issues for the field is the reduction in effect sizes seen when a program is taken to scale.

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Objective: To assess whether integrated behavioral health (IBH) prevention encounters provided during well-child visits (WCVs) is associated with increased adherence to WCVs and timely immunizations in the first year.

Methods: Data were collected in an urban pediatric primary care clinic serving a low-income population and using the HealthySteps model. Subjects were 813 children who attended a newborn well-child visit between January 13, 2016 and August 8, 2017.

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Background: Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families have a markedly elevated risk for impaired cognitive and social-emotional development. Children in poverty experience have a high risk for developmental delays. Poverty engenders disproportionate exposure to psychological adversity which may contribute to impaired offspring development; however the effect may be mitigated by social support and other aspects of resilience.

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This randomized trial tested the impact of an established prevention program for first-time parents, Family Foundations, adapted for low-income mothers and fathers as a series of sessions provided to couples in their homes. To assess program impact, we recruited and randomly assigned a sample of 150 low-income adult mother-father dyads (not necessarily still romantically involved, cohabiting, or married) during pregnancy or shortly after birth. The randomly assigned intervention families participated in Family Foundations Home Visiting (FFHV), consisting of 11 in-home sessions focusing on parental cooperation, collaboration, and conflict management to support children's development.

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Objective: To determine whether current protective custody status (ie, youth currently in the temporary or permanent custody of child protective services, eg, foster and kinship care) contributes to increased health care utilization compared to youth never in protective custody. Health characteristics (eg, mental health diagnoses) and behaviors (eg, substance use) were expected to account for differences in health care use among the two groups.

Methods: Retrospective child welfare administrative data and linked electronic health records data were collected from a county's child welfare system and affiliated freestanding children's hospital between 2012 and 2017.

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Poverty is negatively associated with health and developmental outcomes. DNA methylation (DNAm) has been proposed as a mechanism that underlies the association between adversity experienced by mothers in poverty and health and developmental outcomes in their offspring. Previous studies have identified associations between individual-level measures of stress and adversity experienced by a mother during pregnancy and infant DNAm.

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Mothers in the United States (U.S.) who are of non-dominant culture and socioeconomically disadvantaged experience depression during postpartum at a rate 3 to 4 times higher than mothers in the general population, but these mothers are least likely to receive services for improving mood.

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We examined the efficacy of a pediatric emergency visit-based screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) condition compared to a control condition (Healthy Habits Control, HHC) to help parental smokers quit smoking. We enrolled 750 parental smokers who presented to the pediatric emergency setting with their child into a two-group randomized controlled clinical trial. SBIRT participants received brief cessation coaching, quitting resources, and up to 12-weeks of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

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