UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and IPRC student Jared Parrish was recently awarded a Doris Duke Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, these fellowships are “designed to identify and develop a new generation of leaders interested in and capable of creating practice and policy initiatives that will enhance child development and improve the nation’s ability to prevent all forms of child maltreatment.”
As Jared works as a Women’s, Children’s & Family Health Epidemiologist in Alaska, we recently “sat down” with him via email to ask a few question about his past and future plans.
Jared Parrish, PhD Candidate, at his “other office.”
IPRC: Who are your biggest mentors?
JP: I’ve had many, but I’ll touch on three of the sentinel mentors and keep it brief.
Dr. Ray Merrill at Brigham Young University first exposed me to the field of Epidemiology. He instilled in me the desire to approach health problems through systematic analysis. He was the primary reason I left the pre-medicine degree and moved into public health and biostatistics.
Dr. Alan Katz at the University of Hawaii expanded my epidemiology understanding and encouraged me to explore, and most importantly question many research conclusions made on a variety of topics. Further he taught me that new perspectives are vital for unbiased and comprehensive research to occur. He instilled within me a confidence in my ability to conduct scientific investigations and critically approach problems. He further counseled me to pursue my research interests in an area of health that will keep my curiosity engaged and have the potential to have meaningful public impact.
My former Running coach, Coach Bumgartner helped me understand and prepare for life through a simple activity. He taught me that the amount of effort required to be successful in running pales in comparison to the amount of effort it takes to be successful in life. He nurtured and promoted self-confidence and taught me to learn from defeat and trials opposed to withdrawing and becoming discouraged. He is largely responsible for my outlook on life, finding happiness during trials, and never being satisfied with the status quo. His motto was: if you fail to give you full effort out of fear of failure you have already failed.
IPRC: What are the problems with current surveillance systems for child abuse & neglect (CAN)?
JP: For the sake of brevity I’ll try to sum this up with a few main issues.
- I think the primary issues with current surveillance systems is that many of the “systems” we utilize for population based surveillance of CAN were never intended for this purpose. Further, the complexity of measuring an event that occurs largely in secret poses challenges to measurement. While child welfare has been tracking maltreatment (using a variety of state based definitions and policies) the concept of population based surveillance of CAN is relatively new. A variety of methods such as survey, official records and reports, simulation, cross-jurisdiction data linkages, and mixed-methods have been utilized in attempt to measure CAN in the population…what this has amounted to is that no single method will work in all populations.
- I also think that CAN surveillance has tried to identify a single number to represent a complex health outcome which is super problematic. Due to the variability in classification of CAN, definitions need to be flexible enough to account for a degree of uncertainty, but yet maintain a high degree of reliability. I also think that many surveillance systems are ambiguous with respect to the intent of the estimates generated (e.g. is the goal to estimate a timely trend, estimate the magnitude, or some other purpose?). This ambiguity often culminates in complex data collection methods that are costly, inefficient, and result in delayed reporting of trend data.For this reason the Surveillance of Child Abuse in Neglect Program in Alaska has three distinct methodologies it uses to develop estimates. These methods include:
- Timely trend CAN indicator estimation through sentinel site data linkages (this links data for 9 major and hub communities with Local Law Enforcement, Child Protection, Child Advocacy Center, and a Health clinic) on an annual basis.
- Statewide magnitude assessment is conducted through large scale data linkages every three years. Due to the time involved in collecting and linking data from sources across the State this method even in a State with mostly centralized services is time consuming.
- Longitudinal and cumulative risk assessment through birth cohort tracking over time.
- Finally, I think that State-based CAN surveillance systems should be less concerned with external comparison but more concerned with internal reliability and replicability and reducing the number of CAN cases each year. With respect to maltreatment, knowing if State A has elevated rates of CAN compared to State B is somewhat inconsequential. Even if a State has a lower rate of CAN compared to another State the efforts to reduce that number are no less important in the population. Under the premise that any maltreatment is unacceptable, albeit somewhat unrealistic, the implications for CAN surveillance are that it is (in my opinion) less important to have external comparability than it is to have high internal reliability of the estimates utilized to influence policy and prevention efforts.
IPRC: What cool outdoorsy things have you done recently (with all that sunlight)?
JP: I truly have not done as much as I like to do. I have squeezed in a few trips:
- Went for a little backpacking trip to a local lake and got caught in a windstorm that snapped my tent poles requiring a trail fix and a long night of hearing trees fall around me.
- Went for an alpine ascent on a front range peak in the Talkeetna range. The was a short 10 mile approach with minimal elevation until the last 2 miles that went crazy vert after.
- Biked and hiked into a remote area to see if I could approach the major Glacier feeding Eklutna lake but was turned around due to major rock fall, poor visibility, and high degree of instability in the Ice
- This weekend I’m Kayaking to a beach below Portage Glacier and will see if some of the Ice along the sidewall is stable enough for some climbing. May take my surfboard and hang out in-front of the Glacier waiting for an icefall to generate a large enough wave to surf…but this can become problematic quickly without a motorized support jetski. Should prove to be a nice weekend though.
Like I said I haven’t had nearly the summer I usually like, but I’m trying to get out when I can! My wife and I live by the saying, “Couples that play together, stay together.”
Professional Injury Prevention Expert. Do not attempt.