The SAfETy App

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
ID: 1R43CE003174-01
PI: MELISSA DEROSIER; SARAH LINDSTROM-JOHNSON
TERM: 09/20 – 09/22

Demand for effective tools to ensure students are safe at school has increased as a result of high-profile school shootings and a greater awareness of violence on school grounds. Current research underscores the importance of school climate as an essential protective factor against violence. A positive school climate fosters student engagement, academic performance, and mental health. Further, when school climate improves, suspensions, office referrals, and violent and aggressive behaviors among students decrease. The goal of this SBIR is to develop and test the School Assessment for Environmental Typography (SAfETy) software product for schools and school districts. We will build on our team’s empirically validated school climate assessment instrument to create a digital interactive tool that can be easily integrated with typical administrative ‘walkthrough’ procedures. SAfETy will streamline collection of observations of the school’s physical and social environment, implement algorithms to deliver data-driven climate improvement suggestions, and facilitate creation and monitoring of corrective action plans to address climate concerns. In Phase I, we will create a software prototype and conduct user-centered tests with target end users (e.g., school administrators) to determine feasibility of the proposed SAfETy product. Phase I quantitative and qualitative data will be used to inform the Phase II R&D plan. The end result will be a rigorously tested new digital solution to help school personnel improve school climate and safety and address a legal requirement for reporting that schools currently have but for which few tools exist. The proposed SAfETy product will also address a significant public health need for feasible and effective tools to improve school safety and will offer an innovative scalable technology solution to the substantial school district market of more than 132,000 independent governing agencies.

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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.