Pregnant Women’s Perspectives on Expanded Carrier Screening

Expanded carrier screening (ECS) is a relatively new carrier screening option that assesses many conditions simultaneously, as opposed to traditional ethnicity-based carrier screening for a limited number of conditions. This study aimed to explore pregnant women’s perspectives on ECS, including reasons for electing or declining and anxiety associated with this decision-making. A total of 80 pregnant women were surveyed from Northwestern Medicine’s Clinical Genetics Division after presenting for aneuploidy screening. Of the 80 participants, 40 elected and 40 declined ECS. Trends regarding reasons for electing or declining ECS include ethnicity, desire for genetic risk information, lack of family history, perceived likelihood of being a carrier, and perceived impact on reproductive decisions. Individuals who declined ECS seemed to prefer ethnicity-based carrier screening and believed that ECS would increase their anxiety, whereas individuals who elected ECS seemed to prefer more screening and tended to believe that ECS would reduce their anxiety. These findings provide insight on decision-making with regard to ECS and can help guide interactions that genetic counselors and other healthcare providers have with patients, including assisting patients in the decision-making process.     

Development,Feasibility, and Refinement of a Toxic Stress Prevention Research Program

Innovative interventions accessible to at-risk populations to prevent the intergenerational cycle of toxic stress are needed. This paper describes the iterative development of a community-based intervention, 2Gen Thrive, which was designed to prevent toxic stress and promote resilience by improving caregiver capacity to respond to children’s emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs. 2Gen Thrive leverages the collaboration between a Children’s Hospital and an Early Head Start/Head Start education center to help low-income, minority families thrive in the context of risk factors for toxic stress. In this paper, we focus on the process of developing, piloting, and refining our 2Gen Thrive preventive intervention research program, which has been developed following a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach. The primary objective was to pilot test two prevention interventions we adapted for use in this target population: Classroom Theraplay, a classroom-wide intervention designed to prevent toxic stress among children exposed to adversity by fostering nurturing relationships with their teachers; and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training for Parents (DBT4P), a group intervention developed to bolster parental responsiveness by teaching Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) mindfulness and emotion regulation skills. We evaluated qualitative and process data as well as quantitative data from standardized instruments, including The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and Parenting Stress Index (PSI/SF). Results demonstrate the feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of these preventive interventions delivered in the early education setting, and of conducting intervention research using a CBPR approach.     

Does accuracy matter? A review of the consequences of accurate personality impressions as a function of context and content

What are the implications of seeing others as they see themselves? That is, does viewing others accurately have consequences, positive or negative, to relationship evaluations (e.g., liking)? To address this, the current article provides a comprehensive review of the personality accuracy literature and discusses related work from the self-verification and empathic accuracy domains. We specifically explore whether the consequences of accurate perceptions could be influenced by two key categories of moderators: the context of the impression (e.g., high vs. low stakes) and content of the impression (e.g., desirability of traits). Lastly, we discuss future directions to aid our understanding of this question.