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UH researcher wants to find causal pathways to developmental disorders in children in rural Zambia
Of the world's 2.6 billion children, an estimated 11%, or 291.2 million, have one of four developmental disabilities - epilepsy, intellectual disability, vision loss and hearing loss. Recent estimates suggest that 95 percent of these children live in low- and middle-income countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. To find out why, University of Houston researcher Elena Grigorenko and her colleagues in the United States and Zambia are launching a five-year project in rural Zambia, southern Africa, to study children with developmental disabilities. The work is supported by a $3.3 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National...
UH researcher wants to find causal pathways to developmental disorders in children in rural Zambia
Of the world's 2.6 billion children, an estimated 11%, or 291.2 million, have one of four developmental disabilities - epilepsy, intellectual disability, vision loss and hearing loss. Recent estimates suggest that 95 percent of these children live in low- and middle-income countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
To find out why, University of Houston researcher Elena Grigorenko and her colleagues in the United States and Zambia are launching a five-year project in rural Zambia, southern Africa, to study children with developmental disabilities. The work is funded by a $3.3 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.
Developmental disabilities represent a major public health problem, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where resources to diagnose and treat them are severely limited.”
Elena Grigorenko, a Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology
“My research group and our partners at Macha Research Trust in Zambia aim to create a large sample of children with developmental disabilities and provide a detailed characterization of the relevant phenotypes to investigate the cause of these disabilities,” she said. "We will also document how they are viewed and treated in the community and evaluate the services they have access to so we can determine what services are still needed. Ultimately, we want to generate relevant recommendations for policymakers to improve their quality of life."
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Zambia is one of the least developed countries in the world, with more than half of the population living on less than US$2.00 per day.
Grigorenko, director of the GENESIS (Genetic and Neurobehavioral Systems) Laboratory in UH's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, holds doctorates in both psychology and genetics. She has published 500 peer-reviewed articles, books and book chapters and has been working with children and their families in sub-Saharan Africa for over a decade. This latest project focuses on children ages 3 to 18.
The research team aims to find approximately 2,000 children with developmental disabilities in Zambia and 2,000 of their matched siblings, for a total of 4,000 children. Together, they will generate a unique multi-level dataset containing children's social context, behavior, brain and genomic data.
“This data set will reveal a range of manifestations and causal pathways to developmental disabilities in rural Zambia in particular and sub-Saharan Africa in general,” said Grigorenko.
Grigorenko will work on the study with her extensive research team at UH, including associate professor of computer engineering Luca Pollonini.
This research is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01HD109307. The contents of this press release are solely the responsibility of the research team and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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