Translating Research to Practice: A Cultural Strengths, Community-Based, Visualization Approach to Parent Education

Dr. Marva L. Lewis will present a talk on her research, which focuses on a culturally-informed parenting intervention that aims to mitigate chronic intergenerational stress within African American families. 

 

African American families are disproportionately represented in systems that separate family members (e.g., by placement of the child into the foster care systems, incarceration of parents in prison systems, active military duty). These separations disrupt the normal development of a healthy parent-child attachment relationship. Dr. Lewis created a protocol for a community-based parent support group that incorporates the task of hair combing, which offers a naturalistic method to strengthen the attachment between a young child and his or her mother. 

 

Dr. Lewis will discuss The Early Connections Project, which uses the hair combing task in a parent support group format, a community conversation café format; and as a ritual and routine for hospitalized children and their parents.