Category: News

3C CEO Participates in Knowledge Exchange

3C Institute’s CEO, Melissa DeRosier, PhD, is visiting the University of Sheffield in England as part of a knowledge exchange aimed at developing an ongoing working collaboration between the two entities. Dr. DeRosier is working closely with Katherine Easton, PhD, lecturer in psychology at the university. Through the work of the University’s Centre for Assistive […]

Trauma Experts Design Curriculum for Teachers

SAMHSA describes secondary traumatic stress (STS) as “the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another person.” Much of what we know about STS has been informed by the experiences of people in helping professions, like first responders and child welfare workers. Comparatively, teachers may not seem obvious […]

Course Helps Study Abroad Students Make Healthier Choices

3C Institute is collaborating with Dr. Eric Pedersen of the RAND Corporation on an online course designed for students preparing to study abroad. Dr. Pedersen’s interest in young adult/adolescent alcohol use led him to develop the TREK research project, a survey-based study focused on perceptions of alcohol consumption among U.S. students preparing to study abroad. […]

Bullying Prevention Game Funding Awarded

National Bullying Prevention Month just ended, but 3C Institute prides itself on keeping bullying prevention at the forefront of our efforts to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes for children throughout the year. Research shows that everyone involved in bullying—victims, bystanders, and the bullies themselves—are at risk for negative outcomes in all three of these critical […]

Funding Awarded for Teen-Focused CKD Program

3C Institute and investigators at UNC School of Medicine have been awarded Phase II SBIR funding from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to develop My Kidney Guru, a self-paced, adaptive education e-learning program to meet the needs of adolescents with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The aim of the fully […]

3C Partners with UNC to Develop Eating Disorder Resource

In September, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awarded $3.75 million to Dr. Christine Peat and her team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) to develop a training center for eating disorder-related education. Dr. Peat, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, clinical instructor in the Department of Neurosurgery, and […]

Study Results Indicate Positive Impact of Student-led Mental Health Clubs

The results of a study conducted in collaboration with 3C Institute were published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The study was based on an online survey—built, distributed, and managed by 3C—that asked California college students about their familiarity with Active Minds, a national organization that […]

Annie E. Casey Foundation Awards Development Grant

The Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) has partnered with 3C Institute to customize 3C’s Impact implementation support platform to meet the data collection and analysis needs of five evidence-based programs (EBPs) selected by the Foundation. Impact streamlines collection and reporting of fidelity, progress, and outcomes data to support broad scale implementation of these EBPs for improving […]

3C Institute Sponsors Annual Conference on Evidence-based Programs

3C Institute recently co-sponsored and exhibited at the Blueprints 2018 conference held April 30-May 2 in Denver, Colo. The conference brings researchers, program designers, policy makers, practitioners, community leaders, and funders together to learn about evidence-based programs that promote the health and well-being of children and teens. Of equal importance, attendees get information on how to […]

Boys and Girls Clubs of America Welcomes 3C as New Vendor

The Boys and Girls Clubs of America has selected 3C Institute as the new vendor for its National Youth Outcomes Initiative (NYOI) member survey. This yearly initiative seeks to improve services for the 4 million young people BGCA serves annually via a series of surveys sent to both program participants and facilitators in Clubs across […]

News

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.