Environmental Toxicity, Malnutrition, and Children's Externalizing Behavior

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This four-year FIC Development Award will foster the candidate's ability to achieve her long-term goal of becoming an independent interdisciplinary researcher. Ultimately she will develop the skills, knowledge and experience to pursue an international collaborative research career focused on global health challenges, particularly environmental and nutritional risk factors for child behavior problems. This goal will be achieved through involvment in a mentor-oriented international collaborative research study, through pursuing research activities, course work, laboratory training, and conferences/workshops. The proposed training plan aims to build on the candidate's prior research experience with new training in understanding the impact of environmental toxicity and / or micromalnutrition on children's behavior problems. The five specific training goals are to (1) expand new knowledge on environment toxicity, (2) receive further training in nutrition assessment and its implication in child behavior problems, (3) obtain further training in psychopathology, (4) enhance skills in research methodology and advanced statistics, and (5) develop new knowledge and skills in international collaborative research and cross-cultural research. The proposed research plan aims to examine the link between both environmental toxicity and micronutrition deficiency and childhood externalizing behavior. The four specific aims are to: (1) assess the direct effect of lead exposure and micronutrient deficiency on children's externalizing behavior; (2) examine the interactive effect of biological and psychosocial risk factors on childhood externalizing behavior; (3) test which factors mediate the above direct and interactive effects; and (4) identify the specific components of environmental toxicity/micronutrient deficiency and psychosocial risk factors which give rise to childhood externalizing behavior. Hypotheses will be tested in the context of an ongoing international collaborative prospective study of 780 five to six-year-old male and female Chinese kindergarten children. Measures include blood levels of lead and micronutrients, IQ, psychosocial confounds, and behavior problem checklists. Structural Equation Modeling will be used for data analysis. / In summary, this proposed mentored international collaborative research/ training will target three global public health problems: environmental toxicity, micromalnutrition, and childhood behavior disorder, a focus consistent with mission of FIC of addressing global health research priorities.