Saturday, May 10, 2025
5/10/2025
Development matters: Characterizing patterns of emergent ADHD risk through a neurodevelopmental framework - Project Summary Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent and impairing early childhood disorder that presents notable challenges to normative development and can be reliably identified starting at preschool age, with risk captured as early as toddler age when employing developmentally based assessments. Identification of concerning attention dysregulation development, before frank disorder presents, could ameliorate negative cascades associated with emergent ADHD syndromes and impairment. Further, recent research points to pervasive, early onsetting mental health inequities, evident in patterns of emergent ADHD, and the need for equitable assessment to reduce bias in predictive risk modeling (i.e., accounting for protective factors in addition to risks, modeling specific risk indicators, rather than taking race as a proxy thereof). Thus, the current project seeks to characterize developmental change and its sociodemographic context in patterns of attention (dys)regulation across toddlerhood with outcomes at preschool age. This work draws on novel, clinically translatable research tools capturing the typical:atypical spectrum of neurodevelopmental and behavioral indicators of attention (dys)regulation: parent survey and standardized clinical observation. The project engages a community-based sample of children recruited at their first annual well-child visits and oversampled for psychopathology risk (i.e., irritability). Initial examination of outcomes at later timepoints indicates that the sample is well characterized for ADHD symptoms with prevalence matching other community samples. Under this award, I will train in innovative methods of longitudinal modeling (i.e., multilevel and group-based trajectory modeling) to generate models of data collected densely at toddler age, predicting developmental patterns to emergent ADHD outcomes at preschool age(3-5 years). In alignment with an equitable assessment approach, structural equation models examining structural and familial risks and protective factors will more richly characterize pathways to emergent ADHD symptoms at preschool age. This project seeks to characterize neurodevelopmental vulnerability to ADHD at the earliest point in the developmental sequence, establishing an empirically grounded, equitable approach to assessment and conceptualization of early risk.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).