CYFCP Awarded Five-Year NIH Grant

CYFCP Awarded Five-Year NIH Grant

Two Center staff, Dr. Chris Payne and Dr. Stephanie Daniel, join colleagues Dr. Esther Leerkes from UNCG’s Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies, and Dr. Joseph G. Grzywacz at Wake Forest’s School of Medicine as co-investigators of a new five-year, 2.9 million dollar NIH grant entitled “Nonstandard Maternal Work Schedules and Child Health in Impoverished Families.” The goal of the project is to understand the threat of nonstandard maternal work schedules to poor children’s physical and emotional well -being as precursors to school readiness. Parents in impoverished families, particularly mothers, are over-represented in jobs requiring a nonstandard schedule. The project, informally known as the “Women, Work and Wee Ones Study” will recruit economically disadvantaged mothers and their infants when children are 3 months of age and follow them until children are 30 months. Designed to determine health impacts of nonstandard work schedules and related parenting practices on children, the study’s results will provide needed information to help parents protect at-risk children and inform potential policy solutions.