Psychology Month feature: Improving lives of children and caregivers through research
February is Psychology Month, and it’s a time to celebrate psychologists and the vital work they do, including research.
One of the clinician-scientists at the Max Rady College of Medicine‘s department of clinical health psychology is Dr. Kristene Cheung. She’s an assistant professor whose research and clinical practice are focused on children and adolescents with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Dr. Kristene Cheung
Cheung also works as a clinical psychologist at the Manitoba FASD Centre, an assessment, training, education and research service of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority Child Health Program.
“The families we see at the Manitoba FASD Centre inspire most of our research questions,” Cheung said. “In academia, there is often a delay between conducting research, disseminating the findings and implementation. However, as a clinician and researcher, I’m uniquely positioned to immediately translate our research findings into clinical practice.”
Cheung’s main research focus is on the outcomes of children and adolescents with PAE and FASD who are seen at the Manitoba FASD Centre. She also focuses on caregiver- and family-related outcomes of families of children with PAE in relation to diagnostic process and programming.
Cheung and her team are currently working on research projects about the relationship between caregiver stress and caregivers’ attributions for challenging child behaviours. While these projects are not specifically about caregivers of children with PAE and FASD, Cheung said the results could be applied to them.
“So far, we’ve learned that levels of caregiver stress are lower when caregivers believe their child’s challenging behaviours are temporary and caused by more external factors, such as the situation, rather than something about the child. We also learned that caregiver stress levels are lower when caregivers believe their child’s behaviour is not intentional,” Cheung said.
Cheung and her team recently published a paper in Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders. They looked at who was participating in research about caregivers, how they were participating and what outcomes were examined.
They learned that most of the participants were female caregivers, middle-aged, adoptive parents, caregivers of young children, caregivers of children with FASD, and from the United States.
“This told us that the current research may not be generalizable to the families we see at the Manitoba FASD Centre,” she said.
Cheung said her research aims to improve the day-to-day lives of children and caregivers.
“I hope our research can help inform clinical practice at the Manitoba FASD Centre and other diagnostic clinics,” she said. “Having research data supporting our clinical observations has been helpful, especially when working directly with families and consulting with other clinicians.”
The department of clinical health psychology is currently running a campaign to raise $1.3 million to establish its first endowed professorship. The position will help support important research like Cheung’s.
The new professorship will protect up to 50 per cent of a clinical faculty member’s time for research. This would double or triple the base time that faculty in the department might otherwise be able to direct to their research.
To make a contribution, visit: https://give.umanitoba.ca/.
For more information about the endowed professorship in clinical health psychology and to discuss funding opportunities, please contact Rady Faculty of Health Sciences donor relations officer Sam Slutchuk at sam.slutchuk@umanitoba.ca.