The Early Growth and Development Study Pediatric Cohort

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Abstract The proposed diversity supplement will provide the candidate training and research experiences in early psychosocial environmental influences on depressive symptoms in children and adolescents. Depression is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects over 20 million people in the United States and is influenced by myriad prenatal/inherited, genetic, psychosocial, environmental, and health factors. Through guided readings and weekly and monthly research team meetings with mentors who have expertise in child development, depressive symptoms, longitudinal modeling, sleep health, and behavioral genetic approaches, the proposed training activities will prepare the candidate to conduct a research study that examines predictors of depressive symptoms from early childhood and adolescence. Prevalence of depressive symptoms increases dramatically between early childhood and adolescence. Accordingly, the proposed study will examine how sleep health may prevent depressive symptoms across critical developmental windows. The study will also use an ecological framework to examine interpersonal and environmental stressors during early childhood as predictors of depressive symptom trajectories. The research will look specifically at parental hostility as a microsystemic interpersonal stressor and socioeconomic stress as an exosystemic stressor, from early childhood to adolescence, as predictors of depressive symptom trajectories. We will also examine positive peer relations during middle childhood and adolescence as a protective moderator of the association between these stressors and depressive symptoms. This research will leverage the dual-family adoption design of the Early Growth and Development Study parent project (EGDS; Leve cohort, N = 1,000) and integrate data from at least two other ECHO adolescent cohorts (The Family Life Project; Blair cohort, N = 1,292; Project Viva; Oken cohort; N = 2,128). Aim 1 will examine sleep health as a time-varying predictor of depressive symptoms from early childhood to adolescence, to assess the hypothesized protective role of healthy sleep on depressive symptoms over time. Aim 2 will investigate impacts of an early childhood relationship-based stressor (parental hostility) and a structural stressor (socioeconomic stress) on depressive symptoms. Aim 3 will examine the moderating role of positive peer relations on the association between the Aim 2 stressors and children’s depressive symptoms. The long-term goal of the proposed research and training activities is to advance the candidate’s preparedness to conduct independent research focused on psychosocial factors that exacerbate or disrupt depressive symptom trajectories across the lifespan.