The HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study (HBCD)

Welcome

The Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, is an aggressive, trans-NIH effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Launched in April 2018, the initiative is focused on improving prevention and treatment strategies for opioid misuse and addiction, and enhancing pain management. For more information, visit: https://heal.nih.gov

The Helping to End Addiction Long-term® (HEAL) Initiative: Engaging Child Welfare Systems in Research on Young Children Hybrid Workshop will occur on May 25 and May 26, 2023, in-person and via Zoom. Due to space limitations at the venue, in-person registration will be limited. If you plan to attend in-person, please register for the meeting now, otherwise, we cannot guarantee we will have space. Once we hit our registration limit, in-person registration will be closed, and participants can attend using Zoom.

Location:

6700B Rockledge Drive
Rooms A/B/C
Bethesda, MD 20817

Zoom Link will be provided in your registration confirmation email.

Workshop Description:

The national opioid public health crisis continues to impact families across the United States, and for some families, this can result in involvement with child welfare systems. These transitions in care often create significant gaps in our ability to understand the long term impacts of opioid use on future generations. This 1.5 day workshop is designed to promote collaboration between child and family development researchers and the child welfare service delivery system to help close this gap. Speakers from the child welfare policy, practice, and research communities (and other relevant scholars) will deliver several presentations to an audience of child and family researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health, as well as other federal, state, and community organizations.

The presentations will provide:

  1. An overview of the child welfare system
  2. An exploration of the overlap between the child welfare, substance use, and criminal justice systems
  3. A summary of the scientific evidence on the sequelae of maltreatment and foster care on the brain and behavioral development of affected children, on the functioning and processes of families involved with the child welfare system, and on the impact of child welfare services on involved children and families
  4. An examination of racial/ethnic, socioeconomic status, and other disparities in the child welfare system
  5. A discussion on integrating child welfare and child and family developmental research

The workshop will end with a delineation of strategies to promote collaboration between federal, state, and non-profit entities regarding working with child welfare systems to advance child and family development research. The workshop will be implemented in hybrid format, such that participants can be in-person and virtual.