New Mexico consistently ranks in the top six states for rates of repeat child maltreatment. But a team of researchers at the University of New Mexico will use a new grant to learn how certain cultural practices could help mitigate maltreatment.
UNM’s Child Health Grand Challenge team has received $300,000 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to study protective factors to reduce child maltreatment.
Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Rebecca Girardet is one of one of the convenors of the study. She said child maltreatment is complex.
"When families struggle economically, when they have unmet health care needs, it makes it harder to raise children. And given the right level of stressors things can fall apart" said Girardet.
Girardet said she and her colleagues, Co-Investigator Dr. Gabriel Sanchez, Assistant Professor Sara Nozadi and Research Professor Johnney Lewis, believe New Mexico’s diverse culture offers protective factors that could be useful in understanding how families develop resilience, which could mitigate the effects of maltreatment.
"Child maltreatment is a big problem but it’s totally preventable. So I think we need to be aware of all the negative data that we currently have but also not lose hope and not lose sight of the fact that we can turn this boat around," Girardet said.
REBECCA GIRARDET:The research is going to support a statewide survey. It will be an anonymous survey of young adults, asking them about their experiences growing up as children in New Mexico.
And a lot of the questions will be about negative experiences. A lot of the questions focus on what we think of traditionally is child maltreatment – physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. But there are also a few questions about historical traumas, so really what we might think of is more societal level maltreatment of children, which has been a problem in New Mexico's history.
And then we also have some questions about community level protective factors. And the reason for that is the absence of protective factors is sometimes a bigger predictor of poor outcomes in the presence of risk factors. So we really need to, in addition to asking about what are the bad things that have happened so that we can try and prevent those in the future, we also want to learn about the things that might support people in their communities that perhaps the state could promote in order to try and prevent maltreatment or mitigate its effects going forward.
KUNM: Can you tell me more about the other researchers on the team and what they will be looking at?
GIRARDET: Lewis and Rosati, who are also on this study, have a lot of experience working with tribal communities and looking at questions involving environmental contaminations, and how that might have resulted in some negative community outcomes and health outcomes in families who live in those areas.
KUNM: Our state agencies have received criticism for their handling of abuse cases. But how will having access to this type of research be helpful to those agencies and help them invest in preventative tools or focused on including culture in their work?
GIRARDET: That really is our goal is to be able to provide a better metric for the state. I don't think it's a real criticism of New Mexico that the state doesn't have a good way of tracking maltreatment. CYFD does a terrific job of reporting the data that they're aware of. But we just know from a lot of national research, that there are a lot of cases that never get reported, that never come to the attention of authorities. And then in a diverse state like New Mexico, there are some cases occurring on state lands, but likely some cases occurring on tribal lands, and those are handled differently. And that data doesn't necessarily get combined with the data that CYFD has. So for all of those reasons, the only way really to try and find out the scope of the issue is to ask people to do a survey study.
KUNM: On a recent episode of our live call-in show, “Let's Talk New Mexico,” I had a few lawmakers share their frustrations with not being able to move child well-being legislation out of the Roundhouse this session. Do you think having your research could be used as a resource so lawmakers can be strategic in proposing legislation that could be helpful to mitigate the issue?
GIRARDET: I'm hoping it'll have a tremendous impact. We need good information about the scope of maltreatment and risk and protective factors that lawmakers will be able to to act on. I think without having this data, it's hard to know how to grab the bull by the horns, so to speak. And child maltreatment is a big multifactorial problem and without sound comprehensive data — we currently have sound but very limited data in the state. We need more comprehensive data in order to guide lawmakers about what the next, most appropriate steps should be.
This coverage is made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.
