Spotlight on Dr. Kipke
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Education
Experimental/Health Psychology in
1990 from the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine at Yeshiva University
Research Interests
Diagnosis, treatment and early interventions for children with neurodevelopmental disorders
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A Focus on Community-Based Research
I’ve spent my career conducting research focused on HIV prevention, particularly among high risk and vulnerable youth. In fact, I have been working in the field of HIV prevention since the start of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s, when I was a doctoral student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Since that time I have continued this research because rates of infection continue to remain high among young people, particularly young people of color. Our research is focused on both understanding risks within the developmental period called “emerging adulthood” and then designing prevention interventions that are both developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant. It is sobering that last year marked the 25th anniversary of the HIV epidemic, yet we still know so very little about how to help young people protect themselves from HIV infection.
In addition to my work with HIV, my research has also focused over the years on other threats to child and adolescent health and well-being, including childhood obesity and diabetes; injuries that occur in everyday settings; and more recently, on autism spectrum disorder and other pediatric developmental disorders.
Important Influences
I have been fortunate to have accumulated several dear friends and mentors over the years, including Dr. Karen Hein who I worked with in New York in the 1980s and then again while I was at the Institute of Medicine/National Research Council during the late 1990s, and Dr. Elena Nightingale is another wise and trusted friend and mentor who has helped me in countless ways throughout the years. I can’t say enough about the importance of life-long mentoring. |
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Working at The Saban Research Institute
I had been at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles from 1990 to 1997 engaged in my own research funded by the NIH and CDC and then took a four year leave of absence to engage in child and family policy by directing the Board on Children, Youth, and Families at the Institute of Medicine/National Research Council. I returned to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles when Dr. Roberta Williams who had just become the new chair, encouraged me to help build the infrastructure needed to support community-based, public health, and community translational research at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. That was very appealing and so I returned in 2001 and started a new program called Community, Health Outcomes, and Intervention Research Program (CHOIR). I am also an associate director for The Saban Research Institute, overseeing population-based, public health, and community-based research and enjoy working with the extraordinary group of scientists within this institute.
Research Evolution
I am an Experimental Research and Health Psychologist with clinical training during both pre- and post-doctoral internships, but I began my career conducting public health-related epidemiologic and prevention research related to HIV/AIDS. As a result, I tend to think of myself as a behavioral and social scientist that can apply a set of skills to any number of public health threats to children and adolescents. Through my research I try to understand the various individual, familial, peer and even neighborhood factors that put some children and adolescents at an increased risk. After a comprehensive study of all these risk factors, I develop interventions deisgned to reduce and/or eliminate that risk. So my research interests have evolved to include a wide range of threats to children, including injuries, which are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality to children, particularly in Los Angeles; obesity and type II diabetes, which is now a public health crisis; low birth weight and poor birth outcomes, which is of particular concern in Los Angeles; and now autism given the 633% increase that we have seen this past decade in the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the State of California. |
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Community-Participatory Research
Currently, I’m very focused on community-participatory research. This form of research is designed to engage the community in defining their own data and research needs. We also work directly with the community in the actual conduct of research and development of local public health interventions that can be implemented in community settings;e.g., pre-school and school settings, YMCAs, social service agencies. Called Type-II translational research, this particular model translates the findings from clinical and epidemiological research into widespread application in community settings.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Most recently, advances in autism research will help us focus on early identification and diagnosis of autism, particularly in community settings and with the diverse population of children that live in Los Angeles. |
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