By Barri Bronston, Tulane University
A Tulane University researcher will study the effectiveness of an intervention to address trauma in mothers and their children as part of a four-year grant that will bring the family-focused project to New Orleans area Head Start centers. Under the $500,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, assistant professor of psychology Sarah Gray and her team of graduate students and trainees will implement a program called Mom Power, an existing evidence-based intervention that aims to mitigate the negative impacts of trauma on physical and mental health across generations. Gray, director of the Tulane Child and Family Lab and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Tulane School of Medicine, said the project builds on the research she has been doing since arriving at Tulane in 2014. “In our work, we’ve seen that mothers’ experiences of early adversity have implications not only for their own physical and mental health, but also for their young children’s,” Gray said. “Existing research, including our own, shows that that the effects of trauma can extend across generations, and also that moms’ mental health and behavior affect their kids, and vice versa,” she said.