Many factors play a role in the healthy development of children and much of our research focuses on learning more about these influences. They might be contextual effects of schools, families and neighbourhoods or they might include prenatal and genetic factors impacting development.
Research includes:
Understanding School Success:
- studying children’s educational trajectories from kindergarten into the junior grades
- social inclusion or exclusion of children with special needs and mental health disorders
- studies examining bulling prevention programs, summer school programs, reading practices, anxious school refusal, chronic suspension, mental health and academic achievement among immigrant youth
Neighbourhood Influences:
- impact of housing and neighbourhood interventions on healthy child development
- impact of receiving subsidized housing on adult mental health and healthy child development
- explaining neighbourhood change in EDI scores in Peel and Hamilton
Early Life Influences:
- metabolic, cardiovascular and cognitive outcomes and determinants in young adults born with extremely low birth weights
- how temperament and early life experiences shape brain-behavioural relations and affect processing and regulation
- brain development in children exposed to adversity
Vulnerable Populations:
- information about parenting and child development and health service utilization among subgroups of young mothers
- early origins of addiction in children and youth
- examining the extent to which inequities in mental health and academic achievement exist between immigrant, refugee and non-immigrant children
Social and Contextual Influences:
- 2014 Ontario Child Health Study(OCHS)
- cross-national differences in the effects of socio-economic status variables, preventive interventions and other exposures on child growth and mortality
- secondary analysis studies of Demographic Health Surveys conducted in over 60 developing countries
- studies examining social information processing, family relationships, social competence & cooperation
Studies
The following are the studies with websites, which our researchers are involved in within this area of focus:
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