Keynote Speaker to Discuss 10-Year Landmark Study on Adolescent Brain Development During Pediatrics Conference

Gaya Dowling, PhD, as the featured keynote speaker for an AAP plenary during the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Baltimore on April 28, will talk about factors that affect the teenage brain based on a federal research project spanning a decade. Dr. Dowling, a researcher and neurobiologist, is the director of the federal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (https://abcdstudy.org), which will follow nearly 12,000 children starting from ages 9-10 years to 19-20 years. Dr. Dowling will discuss questions about the influences on teen health and behavior that are expected to be answered from the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, during the plenary, AAP President Kyle Yasuda will highlight the essential role of pediatric research on key AAP and child health priorities during an address. In addition, the plenary schedule will feature original research on:

• Firearm Child Access Prevention Laws and Firearm Death Rates among Children, 1991-2016
• Cooling Child Hospitalization Hotspots: A Neighborhood-based Approach to Population Health Improvement
• Changes in the Recreational Built Environment and Youth BMI
• Dialogue Around Respiratory Illness Treatment (DART) Quality Improvement (QI) Program Reduces Outpatient Antibiotic Prescribing
• Investigation of Acute Flaccid Myelitis – United States, 2018
• The Effect of Phototherapy on Breastfeeding

AAP News also has an article on Dr. Dowling’s speech.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit www.aap.org and follow us on Twitter @AmerAcadPeds