The University of Washington Population Health Initiative's Tier 1 Pilot Research Grant encourages new interdisciplinary collaborations among investigators for projects that address critical components of grand challenges the UW seeks to address in population health. Dr. LaShawnDa Pittman's research team was selected to receive $24,268 for the project, "Stress Reduction Intervention for African American Kinship Caregivers in Skipped-Generation Households." This is an interdisciplinary collaboration, composed of a project team made up of Dr. Pittman, Dr. Wadiya Udell (Bothell, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences) and members of local community-based kinship care organizations (Barb Taylor, Cynthia Green, and Mary Prescott).
Why a multicomponent stress reduction intervention for African American kinship caregivers in skipped-generation households?
African American grandmothers raising grandchildren in skipped-generation households (consisting only of grandparents and grandchildren) experience numerous economic, social, and health-related vulnerabilities, including severe economic deprivation, legal marginalization, and poor mental and physical health outcomes. Yet, few interventions designed to reduce stress and improve health among this population address three key factors that impact their well-being: financial hardship, parenting challenges, and daily stressors. Dr. Pittman and her research team are developing a multicomponent stress reduction intervention that increases Black kinship caregivers’ utilization of informal and formal resources (financial navigation services and resourcefulness training), knowledge and tools to address children’s developmental needs across the life course (parenting training), and strategies to decrease daily stressors unique to their families (mindfulness-based stress reduction training). To develop the intervention and set the groundwork for a future feasibility study they will use the Tier 1 Pilot Research Grant to conduct focus groups with kinship caregivers to get their input on intervention content, intervention format (e.g., length and number of sessions), and data collection methods (e.g., biomeasures, financial assessment tools). They will also develop a community advisory board (CAB) to help guide intervention development.