Advanced Search
Current and Breaking News for Professionals, Consumers and Media




Children's Health Author: Staff Editor Last Updated: Sep 7, 2017 - 10:06:33 PM



Poverty’s Most Insidious Damage Is to a Child’s Brain

By Staff Editor
Jul 21, 2015 - 10:28:09 AM



Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for our Ezine
For Email Marketing you can trust


Email this article
 Printer friendly page

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Newswise - An alarming 22 percent of U.S. children live in poverty, which can have long-lasting negative consequences on brain development, emotional health and academic achievement. A new study, published July 20 inJAMA Pediatrics, provides even more compelling evidence that growing up in poverty has detrimental effects on the brain.

In an accompanying editorial, child psychiatrist Joan L. Luby, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, writes that "early childhood interventions to support a nurturing environment for these children must now become our top public health priority for the good of all."

In her own research in young children living in poverty, Luby and her colleagues have identified changes in the brain's architecture that can lead to lifelong problems with depression, learning difficulties and limitations in the ability to cope with stress.

However, her work also shows that parents who are nurturing can offset some of the negative effects on brain anatomy seen in poor children. The findings suggest that teaching nurturing skills to parents - particularly those who live below the poverty line - may provide a lifetime of benefit for children.

"Our research has shown that the effects of poverty on the developing brain, particularly in the hippocampus, are strongly influenced by parenting and life stresses experienced by the children," said Luby, the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Child Psychiatry and director of Washington University's Early Emotional Development Program.

The study in JAMA Pediatrics, by a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that low-income children had irregular brain development and lower standardized test scores, with as much as an estimated 20 percent gap in achievement explained by developmental lags in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.

"In developmental science and medicine, it is not often that the cause and solution of a public health problem become so clearly elucidated," Luby wrote in the editorial. "It is even less common that feasible and cost-effective solutions to such problems are discovered and within reach."

Based on this new research and what already is known about the damaging effects of poverty on brain development in children, as well as the benefits of nurturing during early childhood, "we have a rare roadmap to preserving and supporting our society's most important legacy, the developing brain," Luby writes. "This unassailable body of evidence taken as a whole is now actionable for public policy."

Funding for Joan Luby's research cited in the editorial comes from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH grant numbers 1R01 MH098454-01A1 and 2R01 MH090786-06.

Luby J. Poverty's most insidious damage: The developing brain. JAMA Pediatrics, published online July 20, 2015.

Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

###

For advertising/promo please call Mike McCurdy at: 877-634-9180 or email [email protected]



Top of Page

HealthNewsDigest.com

Children's Health
Latest Headlines


+ Helping Children Cope with School Shooting
+ Deaf Children with Learning Delays Benefit From Cochlear Implants
+ Provide Antibody Testing to Help Study Long COVID in Children 
+ New Resources for Clean and Healthy Child Care
+ Do Early Therapies Aid Very Young Children With or at High Likelihood for Autism?
+ Diet Has Key Role in ADHD Symptoms in Children
+ Home Environment Protects Against Development of Heart Disease Risk Factors After Child Abuse
+ Children in Underserved Communities Are at Increased Risk of Being Admitted to the Pediatric ICU and of Dying There
+ Children’s Physical Activity Levels Fell Below National Guidelines in Wake of Pandemic
+ Potential Pathway Linking Infant Infections to Cardiovascular Disease



Contact Us | Job Listings | Help | Site Map | About Us
Advertising Information | HND Press Release | Submit Information | Disclaimer

Site hosted by Sanchez Productions