Commissioner Handy speaks with Community Leader, Dr. Anthony Biglan
Commissioner Handy spoke with Dr. Anthony Biglan about his community work and interest in children’s health. The conversation is relevant as the Commissioners face tough decisions about funding that impacts community health.
Dr. Anthony (Tony) Biglan has been working for decades on the prevention of problems in childhood and adolescence and brain development in children. Dr. Biglan is a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Research Institute (ORI) as well as Director of the Center for Community Interventions on Childrearing at ORI.
In 2009, Lane County asked the Citizen Advocates for Public Safety (CAPS) task force to look into reforms and initiatives involving all aspects of our County’s cash-strapped public safety system, with the CAPS group tasked to make recommendations to the Lane County Board of Commissioners.
CAPS co-chairs, Jean Tate and Dave Frohnmayer, invited Dr. Biglan to be a member of the CAPS task force. Since then, Dr. Biglan and Commissioner Rob Handy met to talk. Here are some excerpts from that conversation:
RH: Tony, I understand that about 50 of the world’s top behavioral scientists reside here in Lane County and many are associated with ORI. While many folks have heard of ORI, few may know just how far-reaching, around the world the cutting-edge behavioral research here in Lane County has become. Tell me what about your work is resonating in so many different states and countries.
Tony: It is true, Lane County is one of the major places where effective prevention and treatment interventions have been and are being developed. Not just at ORI, but also at Oregon Social Learning Center, the University of Oregon, Deschutes Research Institute, the Oregon Center for Applied Science, Intervision, and the Eugene Research Institute. And there could be more that I’ve forgotten.
The reason this work is having an impact around the country and around the world is because of the evidence that the interventions work. For fifty years, researchers in Lane County have been developing ways to help people with all kinds of problems, like cigarette smoking, children’s aggressive behavior, and depression.
RH: My wife teaches 1st-graders, and I know she values being involved with detecting early trends and challenges in a child’s development, and helping to provide the support for a child’s success. Kids who have difficulty managing strong feelings and resort to aggressive behavior often have weak academic skills. It’s also an age where antisocial behavior can get reinforced by peers. And once kids get behind academically and socially, it can be hard for those kids to catch up.
Tony: You are right. Quite some time ago people like Hill Walker at the University of Oregon, and Jerry Patterson and John Reid at Oregon Social Learning developed ways to help parents and teachers make sure that children could develop the self-regulation skills they need to make friends, cooperate with others, and learn.
RH: By the time kids with behavioral challenges get to the 8th-grade, we start to see a clustering effect. We see kids exhibiting risky sexual behavior, experimenting with alcohol and substance abuse and the depression that can accompany them. Risky behaviors get reinforced by peers engaging in similar risky behaviors. The cost of problem behaviors to the United States adds up to $435 billion annually, $5.3 billion here in Oregon. And methamphetamine is often at the end of the trail of a number of risky behaviors along the way. What kinds of prevention and intervention opportunities are you finding work? Can we be leveraging more federal funds to be doing this cutting edge work here?
Tony: You have been reading the literature! The recent report by the Institute of Medicine documents numerous family and school interventions that can prevent the development of all these problems. Some are as simple as a game that kids play in first grade that teaches them self-control and cooperation. Others help parents develop skills for being patient and helping their children learn.
RH: You have been thoughtful in describing the critical role of self-regulation in changing behaviors. Many at-risk youth are impulsive, they are risk-takers, and they haven’t been taught how to calm themselves down. You have noted that randomized trials are important in prevention science in determining what works and what doesn’t. Tony, tell us about the Good Behavior Game and how that came to be.
Tony: I am not sure you need me for this. You know your stuff! The Good Behavior Game, the program I just mentioned, was developed by an elementary school teacher in Kansas. The class is divided into two or three teams. Each team can earn a reward, if they work cooperatively without disruptions for, initially, as little as ten minutes. The rewards include things like an extra ten minutes of recess. This program has been shown to prevent drug abuse and crime in adulthood for kids who played it in first grade!
RH: I understand that the Nurse-Family Partnership Program helps at-risk mothers during pregnancy and the child’s infancy. My understanding is that it helped mothers who smoked quit during their pregnancy and that helping them quit prevented their kids from getting involved in delinquency at age 15. That is startling. How can it be applied more broadly?
Tony: The federal government is funding replications of this program around the nation and they are carefully tracking its benefits to make sure it works when it is implemented.
RH: We are fortunate to have such talented and pragmatic behavioral scientists working here in Lane County. Thank you for being involved, Dr. Biglan.