An event on Monday, Jan. 22, at Penn State's University Park campus will focus on how a clinic visit with a 6-year-old girl grew into a National Institutes of Health-sponsored, five-year randomized controlled trial.
iLookOut for Child Abuse: A Public Reception will be held from 5 to 6:15 p.m. at the Arts and Design Research Incubator, 16 Borland Building.
The iLookOut project is funded through a $4.3 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to conduct a five-year randomized controlled trial in Maine. The principal investigator is Dr. Benjamin H. Levi at Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Children’s Hospital. Levi was the founding director of the Penn State Center for the Protection of Children, which is part of Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network. His research focuses on various forms of human decision-making, including reporting suspected child abuse.
Faculty from Humanities, Pediatrics, Theatre, Educational Psychology, Extension Education, Behavioral Sciences and Instructional Technology collaborated to create a free online program that uses stories and interactive learning modules to help child care providers better identify and report children who have been abused.
The iLookOut learning program has already been shown to increase knowledge and change attitudes about reporting child abuse. The current NIH study is examining how much iLookOut changes child care providers’ actual reporting practices. It is a collaboration with Maine’s Office of Child and Family Services as well as Maine Roads to Quality.