University of California, San Francisco.
Department of Economics, Baylor University.
Prev Med Rep. 2016 Sep 7;4:507-11. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2016.09.004. eCollection 2016 Dec.
Socioemotional development in early childhood has long-term impacts on health status and social outcomes, and racial and socioeconomic disparities in socioemotional skills emerge early in life. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is an early childhood nutrition intervention with the potential to ameliorate these disparities. Our objective was to assess the impact of WIC on early socioemotional development in a longitudinal study. We examined the association between WIC participation and scores on the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) in 327 predominantly African American mother-child dyads who were participants in the longitudinal Conditions Affecting Neurocognitive Development in Early Life (CANDLE) Study (Memphis, TN). To account for selection bias, we used within-child fixed effects to model the variability in each child's BITSEA scores over two measurement occasions (ages 12 and 24 months). Final models were adjusted for time-varying characteristics including child age, maternal stress, mental health, child abuse potential, marital status, and food stamp participation. In fully adjusted models, we found no statistically significant effect of WIC on change in socioemotional development (β = 0.22 [SD = 0.39] and β = - 0.58 [SD = 0.79] for BITSEA Competence and Problem subdomains, respectively). Using rigorous methods and a longitudinal study design, we found no significant association between WIC and socioemotional development in a high needs population. This finding suggests that early childhood interventions that more specifically target socioemotional development are necessary if we are to reduce racial disparities in socioemotional skills and prevent poor social and health outcomes across the life course.
儿童早期的社会情感发展对健康状况和社会结果有长期影响，社会情感技能的种族和社会经济差异在生命早期就出现了。妇女、婴儿和儿童特别补充营养计划（WIC）是一项儿童早期营养干预措施，有潜力改善这些差异。我们的目的是在一项纵向研究中评估 WIC 对早期社会情感发展的影响。我们研究了 WIC 参与与纵向条件影响神经认知发育早期生活（CANDLE）研究（田纳西州孟菲斯）中 327 对主要是非裔美国母子对的Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment（BITSEA）评分之间的关联。为了解决选择偏差问题，我们使用儿童内固定效应模型来模拟每个孩子在两个测量时间点（12 个月和 24 个月）的 BITSEA 评分的变化。最终模型调整了随时间变化的特征，包括儿童年龄、母亲压力、心理健康、儿童虐待倾向、婚姻状况和食品券参与情况。在完全调整的模型中，我们发现 WIC 对社会情感发展变化没有统计学上显著的影响（β=0.22[SD=0.39]和β=-0.58[SD=0.79]分别用于 BITSEA 能力和问题子域）。使用严格的方法和纵向研究设计，我们在高需求人群中发现 WIC 与社会情感发展之间没有显著关联。这一发现表明，如果我们要减少社会情感技能方面的种族差异，并防止整个生命周期的不良社会和健康结果，那么需要针对社会情感发展的更具体的早期儿童干预措施。
