Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program

Alexandra Potter, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry

(SEPTEMBER 1, 2023) Alexandra Potter, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, spoke to WCAX about UVM neuroscientists’ efforts to recruit expecting families who want to help with a major childhood development research project called the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study.

In 2019 UVM received a half-million dollar grant for the study, and now researchers are looking for moms who are in their second and third trimesters to take part.

The study will follow those families and their infants for up to 10 years, taking brain scans and other measurements to track development, and also gathering data about their home life and environment. The goal is to find out what influences brain and child development. In all,12,000 families will be enrolled across all the universities taking part.

This is an extension of a UVM study that tracked adolescent brain development. Researchers say that the two studies will create a rich data set that’s open to all scientists to access for their work.

“These large studies that are trying to capture cohorts of people really benefit from having rural participants, and that inclusion and the fact that Vermont can do that, that we have the imaging capacity and the research facilities, is really very exciting for us,” Dr. Potter said.