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By Denise H. Horton
dhorton@uga.edu
Two grants, totaling more than $6 million, will allow child and family development professors to draw on years of research findings in developing preventive programs for adolescents.
Gene Brody and Velma McBride Murry, both of whom are faculty members in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, have spent the past several years studying how rural African-American children and their families relate on a variety of issues, identifying why some children are quite successful academically, emotionally and socially, despite growing up in challenging circumstances such as living in poverty and in high-crime areas. Including these most recent grants, Brody and Murry have grant projects totaling more than $16 million.
In his most recent grant, Brody--who also serves as director of the Family Research Center at UGA--received $3.1 million from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to develop a multicomponent prevention program to decrease alcohol and other substance use by African-American children living in rural Georgia.
“This is an opportunity for us to see whether the family processes we’ve identified as being linked to competence in kids can be translated into prevention programs to help them avoid using drugs and alcohol,” Brody says.
Murry, who also works with the Family Research Center, received $3.2 million from the National Institutes of Mental Health to develop a program designed to decrease young African Americans’ risk for HIV-AIDS.
“HIV-AIDS is an epidemic in the black community,” Murry says. “Nationally, 59 percent of all youth under the age of 20 who have AIDS are African Americans. Likewise, 56 percent of all women with AIDS are African American.”
Both research projects will last for five years and each will include 400 participants.
“These two grants are very good examples of how research at the University of Georgia can have a direct and positive effect on some of the most troubling problems our society faces,” UGA President Michael Adams says. “I am encouraged by the direction of this research and hopeful that it will result in programs to help young people make better decisions.”
In his project, Brody will identify 400 rural African-American children ages 11 and 12. The children and their parents will participate in a prevention trial that includes a series of sessions focusing on strengthening family and cognitive processes to foster competencies in the youth and, in turn, deter substance abuse. During the year following the sessions, the families will participate in two “booster” sessions.
“In Georgia, the most common age for alcohol and other substance use to begin is under 14,” Brody says. “By starting this program when the children are 11 or 12 years old, we hope we’re going to change their thinking about using these substances.
“Every component is based on prior research,” Brody also says. “For example, we’re drawing on findings from our earlier research with rural African-American families about parenting and family processes and children’s cognitions about and ‘images’ of substance-using youth that either promote or protect children from early onset substance use. Hopefully, at the end of this project we’ll have a set of prevention materials that we can refine and disseminate to other organizations interested in prevention programs.”
In Murry’s project, those in the control group will have access to the written and video materials that will be used but will not participate in the group discussions.
“Given how serious the issue of HIV-AIDS is, it wouldn’t be ethical to have a completely controlled group,” Murry says. “However, we think there will be significant differences in how those participating in the structured prevention program benefit from the information.”
Murry says those participating in her project will be African-American children who are 11 or 12 years old and have at least one older sibling. She also will involve the target child’s best friend in this study.
“There’s national data that shows African-American boys begin engaging in sex between the ages of 12 and 14; for girls, it’s between the ages of 14 and 15,” Murry says. “We hope that by educating these children at a time when they’re also still listening to their parents, that they’ll be more inclined to delay sexual activity.” |
