Causes

Health & nutrition Education Maternal health

Posted by

Haley F.

Research Project Manager

Our mission

The Division of General Academic Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children is a research division dedicated to improving the health of children and adolescents. The division seeks to reduce and prevent chronic diseases and health disparities among children and improve the health of populations across the lifecourse through community advocacy, patient care, education, and innovations in research.

What we do

Our division conducts research programs that support the needs of populations from low-income communities, while looking to further understand obesity risk factors in the early stages of life. Below is a brief overview of two ongoing research projects we are conducting, and a description of our partnership with the Kraft Center for Community Health:

The First 1,000 Days Program aims to prevent the development of childhood obesity among mother-infant pairs in three community health centers. The program follows mother-infant pairs from early pregnancy until the child's second birthday and supports mothers in caring for their babies and themselves.

Engaging Fathers in the First 1000 Days project will leverage the extensive infrastructure created for the "First 1000 Days" Program to include a systematic intervention to enhance fathers' engagement in pregnancy and parenting, reduce fathers' own obesity-related health behaviors during this critical window of development, and address fathers' social determinants of health. The overall goal of the project is to influence weight and health trajectories, modify disease risk, and improve health care services for mother-father-infant triads from racial/ethnic minority and health disparity populations.

Rise & SHINE (Sleep Health in Infancy and Early Childhood) examines the inter-relationship of sleep, feeding and growth in infants and toddlers, while also looking at father involvement, co-parenting and parent-child sleep synchrony.

The Kraft Center for Community Health at MGH was established in 2011 to expand access to high-quality, cost-effective healthcare for medically underserved patients and communities. The Kraft Center leads several initiatives to improve health care and reduce disparities in the areas of addiction services, cancer care equity, and childhood obesity. Administratively housed at MGH, the Kraft Center is able to leverage an extensive network of internal and external partnerships to develop, deliver, and disseminate innovative programming to address today's most pressing public health challenges.