CHAMP Center

The CHAMP Center (the Center on Causal Data Science for Child and Adolescent Maltreatment Prevention), directed by Glenn Saxe, MD, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine (NYUGSM), is a research center focused on applying unique Causal Data Science methods and algorithms to discover the causes of maltreatment exposure (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect) and its devastating consequences (e.g., traumatic stress, aggression, self-destructive behavior, substance abuse), to translate these discoveries into tools that guide practitioner decisions on interventions to reduce children’s risks, and to evaluate those tools for their ability to prevent risk in the settings children and families typically receive care.

The CHAMP Center’s focus on causal discovery enables the tools it translates to practice to have the potential to guide interventions that can reduce children’s risk because only interventions targeting causes can result in risk reduction. It’s Predictive and Causal Discovery Laboratory led by Sisi Ma, PhD and Constantin Aliferis MD, PhD, at the Institute for Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota, conducts predictive and causal analysis of large data sets to determine models that can be used to predict children’s risk for maltreatment exposure and its consequences.

Then, the CHAMP Center Translation Team, comprised of clinicians, administrators, clinical and implementation scientists, and family representatives, considers the promise of models for their use with children and families in the settings where they will receive care. After reviewing models, the Translation Team advises CHAMP Center leadership on models with the highest potential to improve practice.

Then, decisions are made to advance models for production into Decision Support Tools conducted by the Decision Support Tool Development Program, led by Steven Johnson, PhD, and Erich Kummerfeld at the Institute for Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota. These tools are designed to help practitioners use the assessment data they collect on children and families to determine their risk and the interventions they should deliver to reduce this risk. Once Decision Support Tools are produced, they must be tested in the field to assess their safety, practicality/feasibility, and effectiveness in the settings where they will be used.

Accordingly, the CHAMP Center Practice Laboratory, led by Kathrine Sullivan, PhD, of the NYU Silver School of Social Work and CHAMP Center director, Glenn Saxe, oversees the testing of these tools within community programs primarily dedicated to child welfare prevention led by partnering agencies, in collaboration with the CHAMP Center.

Finally, the Dissemination and Outreach Program - led by Andrew Cleek, PsyD, of the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research and CHAMP Center director, Glenn Saxe - considers all knowledge, products, and tools developed and assessed through the CHAMP Center activities for their potential to be widely shared among practitioners, scientists, administrators, and families for publishing our discoveries, sharing our Decision Support Tools, issuing policy statements, or communicating through webinars or podcasts.

The CHAMP Center was funded with a grant to New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Health Informatics and the NYU Silver School of Social Work and McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research - from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). This funding is part of NICHD’s Capstone initiative to fund national centers of research excellence on child maltreatment. Other Capstone centers are based at Washington University, Penn State University, and the University of Rochester.