Research

My research aims to inform interventions to improve maternal and child health and child development. In my current and previous work I have focused on the three areas outlined below:

Scalable caregiving interventions for early child development

I have contributed to the design and evaluation of three group-based early-child development interventions designed to answer questions about the integration of components for multiple risk factors beyond stimulation in the home (Pitchik et al, 2021), the effectiveness of group-based intervention delivery (Luoto et al, 2021), and the feasibility and effectiveness of integration with the government health system (Pitchik et al., Paper in progress). Together, this work aims to answer questions about the optimal content and delivery of interventions that can be delivered at scale to improve early child development in LMIC settings.

Mechanisms and long-term effects of early child development interventions

In addition to implementing and evaluating the impact of early intervention on child development outcomes, I have conducted research to determine how and under what circumstances interventions work, and to what extent intervention effects persist over the life course. I am currently leading the analysis of a middle-childhood development follow-up of a water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition intervention in rural Bangladesh, as well as a mediation analysis to uncover the pathways of these sustained effects. I have also received a Thrasher Foundation Early Career Award to conduct a follow-up study of children at 8 years of age who were previously enrolled in an early multicomponent intervention that I evaluated during my PhD.

Maternal mental health

I have focused on maternal mental health within my work on early child development, both in the development and evaluation of the interventions implemented in Bangladesh, and in work that synthesizes the current evidence on the effects of early child development interventions on caregivers (Jeong, Pitchik, Yousafzai, 2018). As part of my dissertation, I examined the effect of the COVID-19 related shut-downs on maternal mental health and parenting behaviors in rural Bangladesh (Pitchik et al, 2021). I found that caregivers who experienced more food insecurity and financial loss during COVID-19 related shut-downs reported larger increases in depressive symptoms. I am currently leading a project to distinguish between pre-pregnancy depressive symptoms and perinatal depressive symptom changes in a longitudinal cohort of adolescent girls and young women in rural South Africa (Pitchik et al, in progress). In this area of work, I aim to inform intergenerational interventions to improve both the mental health of caregivers and the development of their young children.

For a full list of my publications, see here. If any of my work is not accesssable to you, send me an email and I’d be happy to share.