Debrielle Jacques wins NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research Matilda White Riley Early-State Paper Competition
Debrielle Jacques is a winner of NIH’s Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR) Matilda White Riley Early-State Paper Competition. The honor recognizes emerging scholars whose research reflects excellence in health-related behavioral and social science research, and the potential to significantly impact the field. The winning paper, published in Development and Psychopathology in 2024 examines mothers’ insensitivity to infant’s emotional vulnerability as a mechanism linking maternal alcohol dependence and infant long-term emotional and behavioral reactivity. Results implicate expressive suppression (or the masking, downplaying, or over-regulation of emotions) as an early protective, adaptive coping strategy infants may use to navigate caregiving and family environments that are negatively impacted by their mother’s alcohol dependence problems. Read the open access paper.
Additionally, Jacques recently joined a Research Expert Advisory Group (EAG) for the National and State Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSSCAW), sponsored by the Administration for Children & Families. The advisory group will help mold and refine a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of children and families who have been the subjects of investigation by Child Protective Services. A refined NSSCAW strives to include and center the voices of children, parents, and others with lived experience navigating CPS systems, and examines how aspects of the child welfare system intersect with individual, community, structural, and societal factors to affect child and family well-being.