Psychology Giving | April 2012

Recent grants

Recent grants focus on South Asian parents raising their child in the United States and why maternal employment affects children

Helping South Asian parents in the United States

The task of raising a child is a challenge for any parent. For immigrants raising their children in a foreign country, parenting is daunting.

Dr. Neha Navsaria, a psychologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is attempting to help one such population with its struggle. Dr. Navsaria, along with Razia F. Kosi, founder of Counselors Helping Asian Indians (CHAI), will use a $20,000 AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Foundation Fellowship to develop and distribute informational brochures and create virtual and in-person parenting sessions to help address the needs of South Asian parents by turning clinical and research knowledge on the South Asian community into accessible parenting tools.

The AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship provides grants to support psychology’s efforts to benefit the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community through research, training, and service/practice.

Parental employment, government support and early child development: An international comparison

How do industrialized nations ensure health development of young children whose mothers work?

Caitlin Lombardi, a PhD student from Boston College, will use her $1,000 APF Annette Urso Rickel Foundation Dissertation Award to address gaps in understanding how and why maternal employment affects children and how policy frameworks for parents with young children can best promote their development. Lombardi plans to examine links between maternal employment and child outcomes across four countries with similar economic structures, and to provide new evidence to consider the policy contexts and cultural norms that exist for working mothers of young children in industrialized countries and the implications that they may have for children’s outcomes.

The APF Annette Urso Rickel Foundation Dissertation Award for Public Policy supports dissertation research to shape public policy to improve the lives of children and families.