Pediatric School Psychology

children born preterm

Early Intervention

Children born preterm often experience academic skills problems. Accordingly, UH PASS research focuses on the development of a screening battery for use in pediatric clinical settings to readily identify children born preterm who are at the most risk for poor academic performance. Highlighting and investigating the academic needs and early intervention tools for this population is essential. Investigating the validity and diagnostic accuracy of parent report and direct assessment screeners for this population is also of interest.

I have successfully obtained external funds to continue this longitudinal work through the Early Career grant competition from the Society for the Study of School Psychology (with my Co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Allison Dempsey). This project involves re-contacting at age 4 the cohort of children recruited at 18-24 months to further study their patterns of academic and behavioral functioning. This will inform the development of screening measures that readily identify children born preterm who are at the most risk academically using early literacy and early numeracy CBM.