Research and Practice | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health

Title	PI / Team	Description
Adolescent Reproductive Health Promotion Training Program	Maria Trent	The primary training objectives and goals for this training period are to assist trainees in developing skills in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of the unique medical and psychosocial problems of adolescence and young adulthood, development of significant and innovative research questions using interdisciplinary study designs, development of a primary research study, implementation of a primary research study, secondary data analysis, and development of a grant application.
Adolescent Well-Visit Attendance & Preventive Care Receipt	Arik V. Marcell	Funded by AHRQ and MCHB, the goal of this work is to describe longitudinal well-visit attendance and preventive care receipt patterns from mid-adolescence to young adulthood using the NIH-funded NEXT study, associated longitudinal health promotion and risk behaviors, and key factors from adolescents’ and young adults’ background, social determinants, and health needs for explaining disparities in these associations. This work will also examine longitudinal associations of adolescents’ substance-use (SU) preventive care and SU behaviors from mid-adolescence through young adulthood and disparities in SU preventive care by adolescents’ background, social determinant, and other health need factors.
Autism Longitudinal Data Project (ALDP)	Xiaobin Wang, Co-Is: Xiumei Hong, Guoying Wang	ALDP seeks to gain deep insight into early life origins of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and related developmental disabilities (DD). ALDP studies a large, prospective birth cohort of US urban, low income, understudied minority mother-child dyads (~60% Black, 25% Latinx). ALDP employs innovative methods by integrating multi-level-dimensional data (psycho-social, environmental, nutritional, clinical, and biomarkers) across the life course to identify upstream modifiable targets to inform a new paradigm towards early identification and optimal care of ASD/DD across the life course.
Brevotoxin from red tides and child birth outcomes	Sara Johnson	This study uses the PREDICT cohort to examine the impact of exposure to brevotoxin from red tide events on child outcomes in coastal Florida.
Building on the Momentum for Trauma-Responsive Policies and Approaches to Promote Thriving and Healing among vulnerable and diverse Californians	Christina Bethell	With support from The California Endowment, Dr. Bethell worked to promote trauma and ACEs screening in California. In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom set aside Marijuana Expenditures from Proposition 64 in order to fund this effort within the state. Dr. Bethell has explored and researched ways to best apply these expenditures to properly distribute them among those who need it most. Learn more at California Prop 64 Expenditures. (Completed)
CARE_PATH for Kids Model and Tools	Christina Bethell	The CARE_PATH for Kids (CPK) is a 3-step whole child approach for families of children and youth with special health care needs to engage, plan, and improve care planning and outcomes in partnership with their child’s care team(s). Learn more at CARE_PATH.
Digital Interventions to Address Risk for Postpartum Substance Use	Allison West	A collaboration with the Partnership to End Addiction, this series of studies aims to develop and test brief interventions to screen, refer, and support expectant and new parents who are affected by or at high risk for substance use.
Early Childhood Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC)	Allison West, Lori Burrell, Kay O’Neill, Cynthia Minkovitz, Anne Duggan	The Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) is a national research and development platform for innovation to broaden and strengthen home visiting's benefits for all families and communities. Learn more at: Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative
ENRICH	Lori Burrell, Kay O’Neill, Cynthia Minkovitz, Jordan Carll, Kelsey Williams	The Early Intervention to Promote Cardiovascular Health of Mothers and Children (ENRICH) program aims to test the effectiveness of an intervention, delivered in the context of evidence-based home visiting, to promote cardiovascular health and address cardiovascular health disparities in mothers and children (0-5 years old) from diverse community settings with a high burden of cardiovascular disease risk factors. Learn more at: Early Intervention to Promote Cardiovascular Health of Mothers and Children
Feeding Baltimore’s Children: The Impact of Community Eligibility	Susan Gross, Anne Palmer, Marycatherine Augustyn	The project collected and analyzed data from the Maryland State Department of Education to determine if implementation of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in City Schools has a quantifiable impact on the rate of: school meal participation; meals served; absenteeism; tardiness; academic achievement; and school advancement and graduation. In addition, through surveys, the project worked to determine if implementation of CEP had an impact on food insecurity rates among families with children attending Baltimore City Public Schools. Principal responsibilities included project management, data analysis, and report and manuscript preparation. (Completed)
Harriet Lane Clinic’s Title X Program	Arik V. Marcell	Funded by the Baltimore City Health Department to provide reproductive health services to adolescents & young adults who are uninsured, underinsured or seeking confidential services and conduct quality improvement strategies to ensure providers are delivering quality family planning and sexual and reproductive health care services.
Health and Employment among Youth in Baltimore (Hey Bmore)	Beth Marshall (co lead), Kristin Mmari (co lead), Rebecca Skinner	Grads2Careers targets recent high school graduates who are not planning on enrolling in a two-year or four-year college/university degree program and matches them into an occupational training program to create a pathway to well-paying jobs in high-growth employment sectors. While there has been some research on how health influences employment status among adults, we know little about how health shapes youth employment pathways. Our research fills this gap by assessing the extent to which health and mental health issues are associated with entry and completion of the Grads2Careers intervention. In addition to mental health, we are also examining sexual and physical health, health care utilization, food insecurity, as well as positive health outcomes such as thriving and access to social support to provide a comprehensive picture of health among these youth participants.
Hopkins Participant Research Innovations Laboratory for Enhancing WIC Services (HPRIL)	David Paige (PI), Laura Caulfield, Susan Gross, Marycatherine Augustyn	The overall study objective is to improve WIC participation and retention of children 1-4 years of age. JHU selected five WIC local agencies (LA) as sub-grantees and provide training, technical assistance and evaluation.
Immune Development Across the Life Course: Integrating Exposures and Multi-Omics in the Boston Birth Cohort	Xiaobin Wang, Co-Is: Xiumei Hong, Guoying Wang	This project aims to profile early life antibody response to a broad array of pathogenic and commensal microbes and early life exposure to multiple environmental pollutants. This longitudinal birth cohort study allows us to examine the temporal, dose-response, and synergistic effects of these early life factors on the development and prognosis of allergic diseases, including asthma and food allergies. New knowledge gained will inform the development of novel strategies for early prediction and prevention of allergic diseases and environmental standards and regulations.
Institute for Home Visiting Workforce Development and Jackie Walorski Center for Evidence-Based Case Management	Allison West	The Case Management Center aims to identify, evaluate, and disseminate evidence-based case management and service coordination strategies in the early home visiting context to improve families’ access to needed health and social services. Learn more about the Institute and Center.
Intergenerational cardiometabolic risk: Explore underlying immune pathways	Guoying Wang	This project aims to address critical questions regarding the immune pathway underlying the intergenerational cardiometabolic link between mothers and their children and to investigate the underlying mechanism of early life folate or B12 status in mitigating the intergenerational link. This project will improve our understanding of the role of early life immune function in the development of cardiometabolic outcomes in later life and will lead to a new paradigm for early risk assessment, prevention, and treatment.
Interplay of the T Cell Repertoire Development and Early Life Exposure on Incident Risk of Peanut Allergy	Xiumei Hong, Kellie N. Smith, Dr Xiaobin Wang and Hongkai Ji	This prospective birth cohort study aims to investigate T cell receptor ß-chain (TCRß) repertoire features and changes during the first two years of life in relation to the risk of developing peanut allergy; and further examine the interplay of TCRß repertoires with potentially modifiable early life factors such as nutrition and metabolomic alteration on peanut allergy. Successful completion of this study will help to identify novel biomarkers for early risk assessment and new targets for effective interventions during the earliest developmental windows when they may have the greatest life-long benefit.
Leveraging Family-Driven Tools To Promote A Cycle Of Engagement Between Families and Their Care Teams	Christina Bethell, Narangerel Gombojav	The Cycle of Engagement Well Visit Planner (COE WVP) Approach to Care is a personalized model of family-centered care aligned to best practices and national Bright Futures Guidelines to improve the quality of well-child visits. The tools are IT-based, family-driven, and consist of the Well Visit Planner (WVP) for pre-visit planning and the Online Promoting Healthy Development Survey (Online PHDS) for post-visit assessment of quality of care given. Learn more at the Cycle of Engagement.
Leveraging Progress to Advance Knowledge, Data and Resources to Build a Culture of Health for Children Youth and Families	Christina Bethell, Narangerel Gombojav	(2018-2020) One of the core foundations of the CAHMI has been to build resilience and overall support for children who have experienced trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CAHMI is committed to RWJF’s goal of “Creating a Culture of Health” by focusing on research promoting whole child, person, and population well-being, through policy and practice.
Maternal Child Health Measurement Research Network	Christina Bethell	(2016-2020) Supported by HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the Measurement Research Network (MCH-MRN) is a multidisciplinary, collaborative network of experts who represent the MCH lifespan and who are active in the measurement of health and well-being of MCH populations. Its purpose is to provide a sustainable platform to inspire, support, coordinate, and advance efforts related to MCH measurement, measurement innovation, and shared accountability to improve outcomes and systems performance on behalf of the nation’s children, youth, and families. The MCH-MRN has designed a measurement framework and agenda dedicated to supporting, coordinating, and advancing efforts related to MCH measurement, measurement innovation, and shared accountability. One of the most notable features of the MCH-MRN is the “MRN Measurement Compendium,” which provides over 1000 MCH measures from 13 different measure sets; its purpose is to allow users to quickly browse all by measure set, data source category, and/or 3 levels of topical categories. Learn more at the MCH Measurement Strategic Agenda. (Completed)
National Institutes of Health Infant and Toddler Toolbox	Christina Bethell	(2019-2025) Child Self/Co-Regulation and Well-Being Domain lead under Northwestern University Subaward. Dr Bethell provides leadership to the development of the NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox (“NIH Baby Toolbox”) with a focus on self regulation and other topical areas overlapping with this construct, such as social functioning and executive function. Measures related to these constructs will be used as a part of a comprehensive neurodevelopmental battery of measures being identified for both research and clinical use and derived from evidence-based neurocognitive research. It is specific for use in the neuropsychological, cognitive and social assessment of infants and toddlers ages 1- 42 months.
New Jersey Preschool Development Grant Birth through Age Five	Cynthia Minkovitz, Anne Lilly	This two-generational approach promotes a comprehensive, coordinated early childhood system of care to address the physical, social-emotional, behavioral cognitive aspects of child wellbeing and school readiness from prenatal through age five.
Payment for Progress: Investing to Catalyze Child and Family Well-Being Using Personalized and Integrated Strategies to Address Social and Emotional Determinants of Health	Christina Bethell	This project is built on prior work led by CAHMI and AcademyHealth to develop a framework, measures, data, knowledge, capacity and consensus in the field to advance a national agenda for promoting child and family well-being by addressing the social and emotional determinants of health (SEDH) and ACEs in children’s health services.
PREDICT Cohort	Sara Johnson	This is a prenatal cohort designed to examine the foundations of child health with a focus on the social drivers of early growth and development. This includes the social epigenetics of early obesity risk.
Preterm Birth and Child Long-term Cardiometabolic Risk: Integrate Proteomics with Birth Cohort	Xiaobin Wang, Co-Is: Xiumei Hong, Guoying Wang	This prospective birth cohort study addresses critical questions regarding the preterm origin of cardiometabolic risk in a sample of predominantly US urban, low-income, Black participants who are disproportionally affected by both PTB and cardiometabolic diseases. Findings from this study may inform novel predictive biomarkers and therapeutic targets so that high-risk newborns can be identified, and effective primordial or primary prevention can be initiated during the earliest developmental windows.
Project Connect Baltimore	Arik V. Marcell	Originally funded by the CDC to evaluate school and community-based methods to engage males in HIV/STD testing and sexual and reproductive health care in Baltimore City by training youth-serving professionals on a web-based clinical services provider guide for male-specific clinical services, Y2CONNECT.org has been expanded into a comprehensive youth resource for Baltimore City to connect youth to clinic, community, web, and hotline related resources. Current funding includes the Johns Hopkins’ IDEA Lab, the Thomas Wilson Foundation, and Baltimore City’s UChoose Program.
Project VITAL (Vacant lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives)	Kristin Mmari, Beth Marshall, Tamar Mendelson, Rebecca Skinner	Project VITAL (Vacant lot Improvement to Transform Adolescent Lives) is a longitudinal study that aims to determine whether and how restoring vacant lots can mitigate health inequalities among adolescents in Baltimore City. For more information: https://bniajfi.org/projectvital/
Scaling Family Voices and Engagement: CAHMI's role and contributions to the MCH field for improved systems, services, and outcomes	Christina Bethell	An article published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal analyzes and summarizes lessons learned from the 25+ year history of CAHMI’s role in shaping the maternal and child health field through continued efforts as a national initiative driven by family and community voices and uplifting integrated systems of care. It begins with a crash course of MCH policy reform in the United States and how CAHMI was created to “meet the moment” and fill gaps in quality assurance to measure and drive improvements, prioritize possibilities to address child health needs and promote lifelong well-being. It concludes by illustrating for us all in the field a visionary path forward. Access the publication.
Statewide Evaluations of Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs in New Jersey	Cynthia Minkovitz, Anne Lilly, Allison West	Utilization-focused evaluative research to increase the accessibility, effectiveness, efficiency, coordination, quality and impact of home visiting in improving outcomes and reducing health and developmental disparities of at-risk expectant families and families with young children.
Supporting and Strengthening the Home Visiting Workforce (SAS-HV)	Allison West	SAS-HV is advancing understanding of how to support and strengthen the early childhood home visiting workforce, including programs funded through MIECHV and Tribal MIECHV, in two focus areas: professional well-being and reflective supervision. Learn more about SAS-HV.
Technology Enhanced Community Health Nursing to Reduce Recurrent STIs after PID	Maria Trent	This study examines the efficacy of a technology-enhanced community health nursing intervention on adherence to PID treatment recommendations and subsequent short-term sexually transmitted infection acquisition using a randomized controlled trial.
text4FATHER	Arik V. Marcell	Funded by the NIHCD and the MCHB, this study evaluates the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of text4FATHER among first-time fathers-to-be connected via maternity care (original R21 study) and social media (newly R21 funded study). We developed text4FATHER, a multi-modal texting mobile health (mHealth) intervention available in English and Spanish, to increase expectant fathers’ infant involvement as a key member of the family triad. text4FATHER engages fathers with texts from mid-pregnancy (i.e., 20-weeks gestation) through 7-months post-birth (12-month duration).
The Engagement in Action Framework (EnAct!) for a Statewide Integrated Early Childhood Health System	Christina Bethell	The Engagement in Action (EnAct!) Framework, developed by CAHMI and the Mississippi Thrive! Initiative with HRSA support, is a national model that integrates decades of healthcare and early childhood research and innovations to promote positive health equity through a comprehensive, community-engaged, and integrated early childhood health system. Learn more on CAHMI’s website.
The Global Early Adolescent Study	Caroline Moreau, Kristin Mmari (co lead) , Kara Hunersen, Robert Blum, Celia Karp, Linnea Zimmerman, Shoshanna Fine, Saifuddin Ahmed, Mengmeng Li, and Trevor Arnett	The Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS) seeks to understand how norms, attitudes and expectations about gender influence health outcomes and behaviors across the adolescent period. Building upon formative, mixed-methods research conducted in sixteen countries between 2014 and 2016, the GEAS has collected baseline data from over 16,000 adolescents on five continents since 2017. Results from the longitudinal GEAS will help to answer important questions about the formation and manifestations of gender inequality, its relationship to health and well-being and the interventions that are effective in promoting gender equality. For more information about the GEAS, including our global network of collaborators, recent reports and publications and open-access survey and training instruments, please visit the GEAS website.
The Impact of Waivers on Summer Meal Participation in Maryland	Susan M. Gross, Marycatherine Augustyn	The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the change in USDA Summer Food Service Program waiver regulations on summer meal participation rates and provider participation in selected school districts in Maryland. Principal Responsibilities as the principal investigator include supervision of data management and analysis, project monitoring and manuscript writing.
The intergenerational transmission of parenting and self-regulation following a universal preventive intervention in childhood.	Sara Johnson, Rashelle Musci	This study examines whether self-regulation in childhood predicts parenting behaviors in adulthood, and the intergenerational transmission of parenting and self-regulation across three generations in Baltimore City. In addition, it examines whether an effective school-based intervention delivered in childhood also improves self-regulation in the offspring of participants.
The National Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DRC)	Christina Bethell, Narangerel Gombojav	(2023-2028) Supported by HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the purpose of the National Maternal and Child Health Data Resource Center (DRC) is to make available National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) findings at the national, regional, and state level through our online, user-friendly Interactive Data Query, downloadable data set features, and other website resources. Additionally, the DRC supports Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant programs and partners in accessing and effectively utilizing data from each level. Learn more at the National Data Resource Center website.
The Oral Microbiome in Early Life and Autism-Related Phenotypes	Sara Johnson, Heather Volk, Robert Yoken	This pilot grant is designed to evaluate the relationship of both the maternal prenatal oral microbiome and the child oral microbiome and autism-related phenotypes in the PREDICT cohort. Learn more at The Wendy Klag Center for Autism & Developmental Disabilities website.
The USDA Johns Hopkins University Women, Infants and Children’s Program (WIC)	David Paige, Susan Gross, Marycatherine Augustyn	WIC provides nutrition education, healthy supplemental foods and referral services to over 10,000 low income women, infants and children in Maryland. Services are provided at 12 clinic locations and numerous community locations, including shelters for the homeless, victims of domestic abuse and Head Start Centers in Baltimore. The program is by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene through the funding of the United States Department of Agriculture. While the WIC Program is at its core a nutrition program focused on improving the nutrition and health of Maryland’s most vulnerable residents, there are numerous associated studies and projects. These include efforts to promote and support breastfeeding, as well as studies that address reducing maternal obesity, providing residents with the tools to make healthy food choices and improving healthy food access in Baltimore City. Learn more about Johns Hopkins WIC.
UChoose dissemination of evidence-based pregnancy prevention curriculum at the Johns Hopkins Harriet Lane Clinic	Arik V. Marcell	Funded by the Office of Population Affairs and the Baltimore City Health Department, the goal of this program is to disseminate evidence-based sexual health curriculum as part of primary care to 14-19 year old female patients.
Understanding the Complex Reproductive Health Needs of Formerly Incarcerated Young Men	Arik Marcell, Alison Gemmill, Dylan Jackson	Funded by the NIH, the goal of this work is to conduct mixed methods study to examine incarceration’s impact on young men’s pathway to fatherhood as well as their experiences with, and barriers and facilitators to, accessing reproductive health care and education.
Using Stakeholder-driven Research to Strengthen Coordination of Health and Human Services to Advance Early Childhood Care for Vulnerable Families	Cynthia Minkovitz, Anne Duggan, Allison West	Research to advance the building of early childhood systems of care for vulnerable families by strengthening the role of home visiting in coordinating health and human services. This project develops a framework for coordination, creates a set of indicators to measure its achievement, and assesses the extent of coordination at the state and local levels (completed).