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Researchers into Infant Massage & Touch
Gene Anderson
Professor of Nursing - Case Western University
10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106
1-216-368-2000
Gene Anderson, the Mellen Professor of Nursing at CWRU's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and a pioneer in kangaroo care, published an article on this topic in the March-April issue of MCN: the American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing. It documents the experiences of one of the first families to participate in her new randomized clinical trial examining the efficacy of kangaroo care for premature infants and the nurse's role in supporting kangaroo care. Under the supervision of specially trained research nurses, the family practiced kangaroo care with their premature son who was born at 32 weeks gestation.
Anderson's $1.1 million study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute for Nursing Research, is examining 100 healthy premature infants and their mothers at University Hospitals of Cleveland. The infants, who are 32-36 weeks gestation, are studied during their first five days in the hospital and followed for the next 18 months.
Kangaroo Care originated in Bogota, Columbia in 1983 by Neos Edgar Rey and Hector Martinez when they developed the "Kangaroo Mother Care" program to decrease the high mortality rate among preemies. Moms carried their preemies in slings all day, every day and the mortality rate fell from 70% to 30%.
http://www.cwru.edu/menu/research/kangaroo.htm
T. Berry Brazelton
Books include Advances in Touch, Touchpoints, Bonding, Calming Your Fussy Baby: The Brazelton Way, Sleep: The Brazelton Way, Discipline: The Brazelton Way
Dr. Brazelton developed the neonatal behavior assessment scales, which tests the skills of a newborn and how these skills can be nurtured and developed by positive parenting interaction. He established the Brazelton Foundation, Inc: Changing the Future for Children and Families One Step at a Time. The Brazelton Foundation was created to ensure the healthy development of children and families. The Foundation's work is based on the research and the 50-year medical practice of world-renowned pediatrician.
The purpose at the Brazelton Foundation is to continuously increase the number of emotionally and socially healthy children who are confident, caring, and hungry to learn through broad adoption of the Brazelton philosophy of positive relationships between parents, providers, community, and the child.
Tiffany Field, PhD – Director & Researcher
Dr. Field’s most famous & groundbreaking study:
Preterm Newborns Gain More Weight: Preterm infants gained 47% more weight, became more socially responsive, and were discharged 6 days earlier at a hospital cost savings of $10,000 per infant (or 4.7 billion dollars if the 470,000 preemies born each year were massaged). The underlying biological mechanism for weight gain in the massaged preterm newborns may be an increase in vagal tone and, in turn, an increase in insulin (food absorption hormone).
Field, T., Schanberg, S. M., Scafidi, F., Bauer, C. R., Vega-Lahr, N., Garcia, R., Nystrom, J., & Kuhn, C. M. (1986). Tactile/ kinesthetic stimulation effects on preterm neonates. Pediatrics, 77, 654-658
Touch Research Institutes
University of Miami School of Medicine
P.O. Box 016820, Miami Fl, 33101
Located At: Mailman Center for Child Development
1601 NW 12th Ave., 7th Floor, Suite 7037)
Phone: 305-243-6781 / Fax: 305-243-6488
Email: tfield@med.miami.edu
Website: http://www.miami.edu/touch-research/
Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D.
Practicing Child and Adult Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst; Clinical Professor Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and Pediatrics, George Washington University Medical School; Supervising Child Psychoanalyst, Washington, Psychoanalytic Institute, Chair, Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders (ICDL), Co-Chair, Council on Human Development.
Dr. Harry Harlow
Received his BA and PhD in Psychology from Stanford University and immediately joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin. Starting in 1957, Harlow worked with rhesus monkeys, which are more mature at birth than humans, but like human babies show a range of emotions and need to be nursed. He took infant monkeys away from their real mothers, giving them instead two artificial mothers, one model made of wire and the other made of cloth. The wire model was outfitted with a bottle to feed the baby monkey. But the babies rarely stayed with the wire model longer than it took to get the necessary food. They clearly preferred cuddling with the softer cloth model, especially if they were scared. (When the cloth model had the bottle, they didn't go to the wire model at all.)
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhharl.html
Marshall Klaus, MD – Pediatrician & Neonatologist
Marshall Klaus , MD, is a pediatrician and neonatologist who teaches pediatrics at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. It is largely due to Dr. Klaus's research on bonding that many hospitals now offer 24-hour visitation to preemies or sick babies, as well as "rooming in" for healthy babies. Dr. Klaus and his colleague, Dr. John Kennell, have also conducted studies showing that a doula's emotional and physical support can reduce the complications of labor. Dr. Klaus is the author of several books, including Your Amazing Newborn (with Phyllis Klaus), Bonding: Building the Foundations of a Secure Attachment and Independence, and Mothering the Mother: How a Doula Can Help You Have a Shorter, Easier and Healthier Birth (both with Phyllis Klaus and John Kennell).
From www.lamaze.com/features/contributors/
Ashley Montagu - Anthropologist & Author of Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin
The Ashley Montagu Institute is a non-profit public charity operating in Los Angeles as a project of Community Partners [an IRS qualified 501(c)(3)],whose goal is to extend and implement the lifework of its namesake, internationally renowned anthropologist Ashley Montagu, through education, research, and community interventions.
Bruce D. Perry, M.D. Ph.D.
If 20 million people were infected by a virus that caused anxiety, impulsivity, aggression, sleep problems, depression, respiratory and heart problems, vulnerability to substance abuse, antisocial and criminal behavior, retardation and school failure, we would consider it an urgent public health crisis.
Yet, in the United States alone, there are more that 20 million abused, neglected and traumatized children vulnerable to these problems. Our society has yet to recognize this epidemic, let alone develop and immunization strategy.
Dr. Bruce D. Perry
www.childtrauma.org
http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/index.htm
Dr. Ruth Rice
Rice Infant Sensorimotor Stimulation (RISS)
Dr Rice has a background in nursing and received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1975 as a perinatal psychologist. Her doctorate research was in sensorimotor stimulation of premature infants. She is the pioneer in research for premature babies. Her research is published in many medical, psychological and sociological journals and books. Dr. Rice's program is translated and present in many countries in Europe. She has trained many individuals in many different countries and spoken at major conferences.
http://www.infantmassage.com/ruthrice.htm
Saul Schanberg, M.D., PhD. - Researcher & Pediatrician – Duke University
Massage Reduces Anxiety in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Patients
Tiffany Field, PhD, Connie Morrow, MS, Chad Valdeon, BS, Sandra Larson, PhD, Cynthia Kuhn, PhD, and Saul Schanberg, MD, PhD
Abstract: A 30-minute back massage was given daily for a 5-day period to 52 hospitalized depressed and adjustment disorder children and adolescents. Compared with a control group who viewed relaxing videotapes, the massaged subjects were less depressed and anxious and had lower saliva cortisol levels after the massage. In addition, nurses related the subjects as being less anxious and more cooperative on the last day of the study, and nighttime sleep increased over this period. Finally, urinary cortisol and norepinephrine levels decreased, but only for the depressed subjects.
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 1992, 31, 1:125-131.
From http://danke.com/Orthodoc/childr.html
Dr. Allan N. Schore
Dr. Allan N. Schore is with the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, 9817 Sylvia Avenue, Northridge, California 91324.
Dr. Alan Sroufe
Professor with the Institute of Child Development in Socioemotional Development and Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. Books: Handbook of developmental psychopathology (2nd ed.) by M. Lewis & A. Sameroff (Eds.)
The research articulates a general model of development and psychopathology where behavior is seen as a joint product of past history and current circumstances. Assessments of early experience and current contexts together always predict psychopathology better than either alone. Early experience does not directly or solely cause later problems yet has a special role through framing of subsequent experience. Tests of this idea include showing that foundations add to current contexts in predicting pathology and that troubled children having positive early foundations are more likely to recover than troubled children who do not. The obverse case is also true. Children with histories of anxious attachment who are functioning well are more likely to have problems in adolescence than are other well-functioning children.
Edward Z. Tronick, Ph.D.
Edward Z. Tronick, Ph. D. is a developmental psychologist. He is Program Director for the Child Development Unit, Children's Hospital, Boston and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School.
His research is on social-emotional development and self-regulatory processes in normal and compromised infants and young children. He has carried out research on child rearing, growth and development in several technologically simple societies.
Currently, he is directing research programs on the effects of maternal depressive symtomatology on infant development; the development of newborns exposed to cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs, and child rearing and attachment in Efe hunter and gatherers in the Ituri forest in Zaire.
Book: Maternal Depression and Infant Disturbance
(Jossey-Bass Social and Behavioral Sciences Series)
by Edward Z. Tronick (Editor), Tiffany Field (Editor)
Bio From: www.touchpoints.org/tronbio.html
This page was last updated 12 August 2005
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