Abstract
PurposeUnderstanding the full impact of COVID-19 on U.S. children, families, and communities is critical to (a) document the scope of the problem, (b) identify solutions to mitigate harm, and (c) build more resilient response systems. We sought to develop a research agenda to understand the short- and long-term mechanisms and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s healthy development, with the goal of devising and ultimately testing interventions to respond to urgent needs and prepare for future pandemics.DescriptionThe Life Course Intervention Research Network facilitated a series of virtual meetings that included members of 10 Maternal and Child Health (MCH) research programs, their research and implementation partners, as well as family and community representatives, to develop an MCH COVID-19 Research Agenda. Stakeholders from academia, clinical practice, nonprofit organizations, and family advocates participated in four meetings, with 30–35 participants at each meeting.AssessmentInvestigating the impacts of COVID-19 on children’s mental health and ways to address them emerged as the highest research priority, followed by studying resilience at individual and community levels; identifying and mitigating the disparate negative effects of the pandemic on children and families of color, prioritizing community-based research partnerships, and strengthening local, state and national measurement systems to monitor children’s well-being during a national crisis.ConclusionEnacting this research agenda will require engaging the community, especially youth, as equal partners in research co-design processes; centering anti-racist perspectives; adopting a “strengths-based” approach; and integrating young researchers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). New collaborative funding models and investments in data infrastructure are also needed.
Highlights
Participants46 representatives from ten networks, as well as their research and implementation partners, participated in at least one of a series of four meetings held between June and October 2020 to develop this collaborative agenda, with 30–35 participants at each meeting
What is already known on this subject? Children rarely experience severe physical effects from COVID-19, but larger systemic and social disruptions threaten their longer-term health development and well-being
We sought to develop a research agenda to understand the short- and long-term mechanisms and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s healthy development, with the goal of devising and testing interventions to respond to urgent needs and prepare for future pandemics
Summary
46 representatives from ten networks, as well as their research and implementation partners, participated in at least one of a series of four meetings held between June and October 2020 to develop this collaborative agenda, with 30–35 participants at each meeting. Participants represented a broad range of disciplines—medicine, social work, health policy, public health, occupational therapy, and developmental psychology—and included clinical practitioners, researchers, and family advocates. Brown University School of Public Health Center for the Study of Social Policy Johns Hopkins University Tufts University Turnaround for Children UNC-Chapel Hill University of California Berkeley University of California Los Angeles University of Minnesota University of Puget Sound Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Rutgers University Brown University Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia N/A N/A. To identify and develop collaborative projects to address those MCH needs in the short and long term; and
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