ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan Center for
Human Growth and Development (CHGD) has received a four-
year, $789,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health
to support its Minority International Research Training
Program. The program will focus on disparities in child
health and development that differentially affect poor and
minority children.

U-M research projects on iron deficiency anemia,
obesity, school violence, school achievement, and air
pollution and childhood asthma, now under way in Chile,
Costa Rica, India, South Africa, and China, are among the
training opportunities available through the program for
the year 2000, according to Betsy Lozoff, director of the
Center, professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases
at the U-M Medical School, and co-director of the program
with Vonnie McLoyd, CHGD senior research scientist and
psychology professor.

“One of the most effective ways for minority
scientists to contribute to improving the situation of
disadvantaged minority groups in the United States is by
working in the field of child health and development,” says
Lozoff. “The future well-being of the United States and of
the world depends in large part on how the next generations
are nurtured. Since 86 percent of the world’s children
live in developing countries, neither child health and
disease nor resilience and developmental vulnerability can
be properly understood without the perspectives given by
research in developing countries.

“In order to meet the domestic and global challenges
of the next decades, we must train scientists whose
research competence extends beyond the study of middle-
class children, adults, and families of European descent.
We need scientific information about pathways to positive
development in children from different cultural backgrounds
and the contexts that foster such development.”

In addition to Lozoff, the research scientists serving
as mentors and training faculty for the program, funded by
the NIH Fogarty International Center, are Center members
Roberto Frisancho, professor of anthropology; Sheila
Gahagan, professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases;
Jerome Nriagu and Marc Zimmerman, professors at the U-M
School of Public Health; and psychology Prof. Harold W.
Stevenson. Other U-M training faculty include Oscar
Barbarin, professor of psychology and social work; David
Lam, professor of economics and director of the U-M
Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center;
and psychology Prof. Richard H. Price.

“Over the past six years, we’ve had 120 trainees in
this program,” says Lozoff. “Our data show that the
program has been highly successful in achieving its goals
of improving the research skills of minority students,
increasing their international interests, and training them
to pursue advanced degrees in the biomedical and behavioral
sciences.”

Application deadline is Nov. 12 for undergraduate and
graduate student placements for the summer of 2000. For
more information on applications, contact Kate Restrick at
the U-M Center for Human Growth and Development, (734)
764-2443 or e-mail [email protected]