HEAD START UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS: DUAL GENERATION APPROACHES

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Based on basic research on the neuroplasticity of attention, stress, and family dynamics, we developed a successful dual-generation intervention, Parents and Children Making Connections - Highlighting Attention (PCMC-A), which targets PCMC-A intervention improves brain function for attention, cognition, and behavior in preschool children in Head Start (HS) and also improves communication skills and reduces stress in parents (Neville et al., 2013). We are now well-poised to expand our partnership with Head Start of Lane County (HSOLC) to scale-up PCMC-A for broader implementation with the following goals. Goal 1: To partner with HSOLC to develop a scaled-up model of PCMC-A that is delivered by HS specialists and sustainable and replicable by other HS programs. Goal 2: To characterize the degree to which PCMC-A improves distal outcomes related to parent/family well-being by assessing health and safety outcomes in parents and children, parental education, financial literacy and decision making, household chaos, and biomarkers of allostatic load related to health outcomes. Goal 3: To evaluate hypothesized mediating factors related to changes in family well-being, specifically changes in foundational systems (stress and self-regulation) by refining our measures of family stress and self-regulation by assessing heart rate variability in parents and children and neurophysiological measures of self-regulation in parents.