Current Activities of the Prevention Research Center

Current funded projects include improving primary care coalitions and global networks, prevention of tobacco use in schools, tobacco cessation for pregnant women, improving birth outcomes for high risk mothers and lowering infant mortality through decreasing perinatal depression, physical abuse and tobacco use. Funded evaluation studies include evaluation of a screening and referral program to prevent perinatal depression, evaluation of safe and drug free school programs, youth advocacy programs to prevent tobacco use, and evaluation of geriatric provider training programs.

Six key areas of research in the PRC include:

•  school health;
  
•  minority health with a focus on improved birth outcomes;
  
•  prevention of tobacco use, cessation and reduction;
  
•  adolescent sexuality;
  
•  youth violence prevention;
  
•  cancer screening and early intervention.

The Center for Health and Health Care in the Schools, directed by Dr. Julia Lear, is affiliated with the Prevention Research Center. The Center is a policy and program resource center for school health co-sponsored by the SPHHS and the GWU Graduate School of Education and Community Development. The Center has two priorities: 1) directing an RWJF national grant initiative to expand access to mental and dental health services for school-age children and 2) to provide technical assistance and other analytical services to support continued development of school-based health programs across the nation.

In the area of minority health, Project DC HOPE, directed by Dr. Ayman El Mohandes, is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional community-based research program addressing multiple risks in minority pregnant women. Now in its fifth year, the program is designed to test the efficacy of an integrated behavioral intervention to reduce the risk of smoking (both active and passive exposure), depression, and intimate partner violence during pregnancy. Eight hundred and twenty minority pregnant women from the District of Columbia have been recruited to this study so far and the project has been given a funded extension by NICHD for an additional year.

In the area of tobacco use prevention, Dr. Caroline Sparks directs an evaluation of a school-based advocacy curriculum to prevent tobacco use among middle school students. The development and evaluation of the Kids ACT! curriculum, developed by the National Education Associate Health Information Network, is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In the area of tobacco cessation and reduction, Drs. El Mohandes, Windsor, Boyd and Blake are currently engaged in proposing to the NICHD another multi-institutional clinical trial to test the efficacy of nicotine replacement therapy in reducing smoking during pregnancy in a highly addicted group of pregnant mothers. This project will include the department of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine and the Clinical Research Institute at Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Richard Windsor directs two projects to increase smoking cessation and reduction among pregnant women who receive prenatal care through the Alabama Department of Health. The Smoking Cessation and Reduction in Pregnancy (SCRIPT) program is a Phase IV dissemination study of best practice methods in smoking cessation for pregnant women. The Alabama Tobacco Free Families (ATOFF) project is a Phase V study to assess social marketing approaches to reducing smoking prevalence among families of child bearing age.

The Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a project funded by NIAAA and is in a pilot phase. This project is designed to assess the prevalence of alcohol exposure in minority district pregnant women in the District of Columbia, linking these behaviors to pregnancy complications and reproductive outcomes. This is a collaborative project with Georgetown University and Dr. El Mohandes is the PI for the GWU site.

In the area of adolescent sexuality, Dr. Izabel Ricardo participates in the Building Futures for Youth project which is a collaborative project including participants from Howard University and Georgetown University. The project addresses choices for sexual behaviors in adolescent minority students in the DC Public School system. Interventions designed for students, staff and parents of adolescent and pre-adolescent children are currently being tested for efficacy.

In the area of youth violence prevention, Dr. Caroline Sparks is the evaluator of a school-based violence prevention project for the Talbot County, Maryland school system which has introduced mental health, social service support and juvenile justice programs for students.

In the area of cancer screening and early intervention, Dr. Mona Sarfaty serves as the Medical Director for the Montgomery County Colorectal Cancer Program, a program of education, prevention, screening and treatment for colorectal cancer targeted for low income, uninsured, and minority residents of Montgomery County, Maryland. This program, a community collaboration funded through the Maryland Department of Health, is reaching the end of its second year of operations and will continue until 2010.

General Relationship of PRC activities to Academic Programs of the University

The Prevention Research Center and the Department of Prevention and Community Health are closely linked. The Department of Prevention and Community Health trains undergraduate and graduate students in three areas of public health: Health Promotion, Maternal and Child Health and Community Oriented Primary Care. The department currently includes 15 full time regular and research faculty members and a number of part-time and adjunct faculty. The faculty includes doctoral trained professionals in health education, maternal and child health, psychology and other behavioral and social sciences, and medicine. All faculty are engaged in research which offers students opportunities for training and professional practice.

The PRC's research, training and consulting activities benefit faculty, staff and students. The PRC scholars often work on externally funded projects with faculty from other departments within the SPHHS as well as from other schools within the George Washington University. For example, our researchers work closely with researchers in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Biostatistics Center. The Center for Health and Health Care in the Schools has collaborated with the GWU Department of Education. A number of graduate students have and are working on externally funded projects for the PRC which enhances their training.