Addressing Adversity and Resilience to Promote Children's Social Emotional Development

Social emotional health in early childhood is a critical foundation for optimal lifelong development. Young children with exposure to adversity in early childhood likely have increased social emotional risks and face greater learning challenges. Social determinants such as socio-demographics (poverty race/ethnicity disabilities) and family and neighborhood/communities intersect and likely potentiate risk for maladaptive adjustment for young children. Addressing the intersectionality of social determinants and adversity and identifying buffering mechanisms in relation to social emotional disparities can illuminate potential points of early intervention to leverage for promoting health equity for children particularly in marginalized underrepresented populations. The major goal of this project is to identify the intersectionality of social determinants and adversity on children's social emotional disparities and examine child resilience in the context of family and neighborhood. This population-based project will be conducted by a team of investigators with extensive expertise in family/ community practices early education and care and child social emotional development.

Goals and objectives:

We aim: 1) To identify social emotional health disparities for marginalized underrepresented children (poverty race/ethnicity; disabilities); 2) To determine how marginalization and adversity exposure intersectionality contributes to social emotional development; and 3) To investigate the buffering effects of family and neighborhood determinants on the association between adversity exposure and children's social emotional development. The goal of this work is to identify critical social determinants and potential malleable social contextual factors that can be targeted through programs and policies to benefit the social emotional development of children. This proposed study aligns with MCHB's Strategic Research Issues by investigating disparities in social emotional health among young children particularly marginalized underrepresented groups. Drawing data from the 2021 National Survey of Child Health (2021 NSCH) this study focuses on social emotional health for a nationally representative sample of young children (ages 3-5 52.2% male; N = 12 002). Children in this population-based study were racially/ethnically diverse including Hispanic (13.21%) White alone (65.97%) Black or African American alone (6.17%) and other races and multi-race (14.66%). Data were collected primarily from parent/guardian surveys. We will identify socio demographics of children with distinct social emotional profiles using person-centered approaches (latent profile analyses) and determine how the intersection of marginalization and adversity exposure contributes to children's social emotional health. Further we will examine whether proximal family (e.g. family resilience social support) and neighborhood (e.g. safety support) moderate the relationship between adversity exposure and children's social emotional health using multinomial regression. The project findings will be published in two or more peer-reviewed journals presented at scientific or policy meetings and disseminated via research brief dashboard and podcasts to researchers practitioners and policy makers. The evidence will benefit health policy and practice in the aim to offset children's risk by providing early experiences to reduce social emotional disparities. This information could be leveraged to make future programmatic decisions to support parents and communities in facilitating children's positive social emotional development. This study is innovative in several capacities: an emphasis on social determinants of social emotional profiles for marginalized children examination of intersectionality of marginalization and adversity and assessing family and neighborhood protective factors on children's resilience.