Child poverty, housing, and healthy decision-making

美国儿科学会将儿童贫困列入其面临的最可怕的健康问题清单 孩子儿童贫困是一个多因素决定的复杂问题， 并对整个生命周期的健康和行为产生持久的负面影响。关键的是， 在科学上理解将贫困与这些结果联系起来的神经行为机制， 针对风险青年采取有效干预措施。该项目通过以下方式解决这一重大公共卫生问题： 测试现有的反贫困计划，补贴住房的有效性，对神经相关性的影响， 年轻人的决策和认知控制。虽然稳定的住房从未直接测试过， 关于儿童的生物行为结果，从慢性压力文献中有充足的辅助数据， 这表明住房可以用来改善儿童的结果。该提案的总体目标是 评估儿童时期获得稳定的住房是否可以减轻认知过程中的缺陷（例如， 决策，风险评估，注意力）导致学术成果较差， 行为。该项目的目的是确定是否需要进行经济状况调查的公共计划，即公共住房和 住房券计划，适度不适应判断和决策，并检查是否稳定 儿童时期的住房与更长期的结果有关，如提高学习成绩， 减少青春期早期的冒险行为。这个探索性项目将确定是否有足够的 支持全量表R 01的证据，以解决：（1）12-15岁青少年的发育变化， 当学术问题和危险行为出现时，涵盖过渡，（2）离散神经发育 能够揭示住房补贴在减轻儿童不良后果方面的效力的机制 在贫困中长大，（3）描述大脑功能，实验室行为和 青少年实际生活中的相关行为，以及（4）采用复杂的计算严谨性来研究这些行为。 关键问题。因为童年/青少年贫困的经历是许多人的一个强有力的决定因素， 随后的学术和健康问题，从这个项目产生的高风险高收益的数据有 有可能深刻评估美国家庭住房补贴的有效性，并将提供关键的 评估其他联邦和州资助项目的信息和框架。为此， 强调大脑中关键认知过程的差异，这些过程是取得学术成就所必需的， 在青春期及以后的有效决策。该项目有可能为新的 定义和详细说明环境对环境产生长期影响的机械方式的研究 大脑和行为这些焦点为知识的进步和应用提供了巨大的希望， 改善公共卫生。

The American Academy of Pediatrics includes child poverty on its list of the most-dire health issues facing children. Child poverty is a multi-determined complex problem with well-documented correlations to profound and enduring negative effects on health and behaviors across the lifespan. Critically, there are substantial gaps in scientific understanding of neurobehavioral mechanisms linking poverty to these outcomes, making it difficult to tailor effective interventions to youth at risk. This project addresses this significant public health issue by testing the effectiveness of an existing anti-poverty program, subsidized housing, on the neural correlates of decision-making and cognitive-control in youths. Though stable housing has never been directly tested with regard to children’s biobehavioral outcomes, there is ample ancillary data from the chronic stress literature to suggest that housing could be leveraged to improve children’s outcomes. The general aim of the proposal is to assess whether receipt of stable housing in childhood can attenuate deficits in cognitive processes (e.g., decision-making, risk-valuation, attention) contributing to poorer academic outcomes and health-related behaviors. The project aims to determine whether means-tested public programs, namely public housing and housing voucher programs, moderate maladaptive judgment and decision-making and examine whether stable housing in childhood is related to longer-term outcomes such as increased academic performance and reduced risk-taking behavior in early adolescence. This exploratory project will determine if there is sufficient evidence to support a full scale R01 to address: (1) Developmental change in adolescents ages 12-15 years, covering transitions when academic problems and risky behaviors emerge, (2) Discrete neurodevelopmental mechanisms that can reveal the efficacy of housing subsidies in mitigating negative outcomes of children growing up in poverty, (3) Characterize aspects of both brain functioning, laboratory-based behavior, and relevant behaviors in adolescents’ actual lives, and (4) Employ sophisticated computational rigor to study these critical questions. Because the experience of childhood/adolescent poverty is a powerful determinant of many subsequent academic and health problems, the high risk-high gain data generated from this project have the potential to profoundly evaluate the efficacy of family housing subsidies in the U.S, and will provide critical information and a framework for evaluating other federally- and state-funded programs. It will do so by highlighting differences in key cognitive processes in the brain necessary for academic achievement and effective decision-making in adolescence and beyond. The project holds potential to open pathways for new research that defines and specifies mechanistic ways in which the environment creates long-term effects on brain and behavior. These foci hold tremendous promise for advancement of knowledge and application to improvement of public health.