LIFE IMPROVEMENT FOR TEENS (LIFT)

The Challenge

Even though evidence-based behavioral health interventions are proven to help students recover from traumatic events, such as accidents, physical abuse, and school and community violence, few programs make their way into schools. A major roadblock is they often require in-person training and program delivery, and most schools don’t have the time or resources to make that happen.

The Solution

To provide a more efficient and less costly alternative, Drs. Bradley Stein, Lisa Jaycox, and Lynsay Ayer of the RAND Corporation partnered with us to create an effective, engaging, and personalized online intervention that’s easily disseminated to reach more people. The result was LIFT (Life Improvement for Teens), an online intervention to build stress-management skills for adolescents who have experienced trauma.

Though they’ve traditionally developed in-person interventions, our partners chose our e-learning platform because they thought an online, self-paced, multimedia format would appeal to their target audience of 12- to 18-year-olds. The course features innovative game and interactive technologies to teach participants how to reduce distress and improve coping skills. And the curriculum reinforces and extends their existing interventions for trauma recovery.

 

All of our e-learning courses are designed to deliver an engaging and personalized intervention that effectively enhances social, emotional, and behavioral health. The content is fully customizable for your learning objectives and target audience.

The Results

RAND cited the value of working with 3C Institute’s interdisciplinary team of researchers, web developers, artists, editors, and video producers to push their work into new, innovative directions. Being new to this course format, they appreciated how we coached them through the development process, clearly explaining the available options and helping them decide how best to meet their learning objectives. Furthermore, due to 3C Institute’s expertise in behavioral health, our team had a high level of understanding of the subject matter, which accelerated course development.

We are grateful to our partners at RAND for referring our services to their colleagues.

Demo the first chapter of the course.

Contact us at (888) 598-0103 or services@3cisd.com to discuss how we can
help you develop an effective online intervention.

“3C Institute knows what we’re trying to achieve. Their staff brings a wealth of information, options, and experience so that we can make decisions easily.”

Lisa Jaycox, PhD
Senior Behavioral Scientist
RAND Corporation
LIFT (Life Improvement for Teens) Online Intervention

Let's Talk

DEB CHILDRESS, PHD

Chief of Research and Learning Content

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Childress obtained her PhD in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to 3C Institute, she served as a research associate and a postdoctoral fellow in the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on a longitudinal imaging study aimed at identifying the early markers of autism through behavioral and imaging methodologies. She has 19 years of autism research experience, during which she has examined the behavioral, personality, and cognitive characteristics of individuals with autism and their family members. Dr. Childress also has experience developing behavioral and parent report measurement tools, coordinating multi-site research studies, and collecting data from children and families. She has taught courses and seminars in general child development, autism, and cognitive development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Expertise

  • autism
  • early development
  • behavioral measurement
  • integrating behavioral and biological measurement

Education

  • Postdoctoral fellowship, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (Institutional NRSA-NICHD), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • PhD, developmental psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • BS, psychology (minor in sociology), University of Iowa

Selected Publications

  • Elison, J. T., Wolff, J. J., Heimer, D. C., Paterson, S. J., Gu, H., Hazlett, H. C., Styner, M, Gerig, G., & Piven, J. (in press). Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months. Developmental Science.
  • Wassink, T. H., Vieland, V. J., Sheffield, V. C., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., Childress, D. & Piven, J. (2008). Posterior probability of linkage analysis of autism dataset identifies linkage to chromosome 16. Psychiatric Genetics,18(2),85-91.
  • Losh, M., Childress, D., Lam K. & Piven, J. (2008). Defining key features of the broad autism phenotype: A comparison across parents of multiple- and single-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 147B(4):424-33.
  • Wassink, T. H., Piven, J., Vieland, V. J., Jenkins, L., Frantz R., Bartlett, C. W., Goedken, R., … Sheffield, V.C. (2005). Evaluation of the chromosome 2q37.3 gene CENTG2 as an autism susceptibility gene. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 136, 36-44.
  • Barrett, S., Beck, J., Bernier, R., Bisson, E., Braun, T., Casavant, T., Childress, D., … Vieland, V. (1999). An autosomal genomic screen for autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 88, 609-615. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19991215)88:63.0.CO;2-L
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Landa, R., Santangelo, S., Jacobi, D. & Childress, D. (1997). Personality and language characteristics in parents from multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 74, 398-411.
  • Piven, J., Palmer, P., Jacobi, D., Childress, D. & Arndt, S. (1997). Broader autism phenotype: Evidence from a family history study of multiple-incidence autism families. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154, 185-190.