CNA Health Research & Policy Awarded Major CDC Contract

Information Brief

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — On September 30th CNA was awarded an 8.5-year, $12.3M contract by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct the Legacy for Children Longitudinal Follow-up Study.

The study, to be carried out under the leadership of Dr. Sarah Friedman, Associate Director of the CNA Health Research & Policy, will follow the development of children whose mothers participated in a parenting skills intervention effort aimed at improving children's developmental outcomes by fostering their mothers' sense of community, parenting self-efficacy, and parent-child positive interaction. (The intervention was provided to mothers from around the time their child's birth up to age 5.)

CNA will be evaluating the cognitive, social, and emotional development of these children at ages 8, 10 and 12 and will compare their development with that of other children whose mothers were similar except they did not have access to the Legacy intervention. The study’s findings will inform public policies aimed at improving the success of disadvantaged children in school and in life. CNA will be working in collaboration with Battelle, an international science and technology enterprise, which will be collecting data from the families and children in Los Angeles and Miami.

This contract award was based on what the CDC deemed a "technically outstanding" proposal developed by CNA's Sarah Friedman, Candace Hill, Yvette Clinton, Sandra Baker, Shira Solomon, Steve Broyhill, Liz Williams, Jeanne Leslie, Michael Zakriski, Mark Gritz, and collaborators from Battelle.