(Providence, RI) – Dr. Alexandrea L. Craft, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Women & Infants Hospital, and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry & Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has received the prestigious NIH Director’s Early Independence Award from the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program which will help support her research in perinatal health disparities.
“Receiving this award reaffirms that the work that I am doing is important and matters,” said Dr. Craft. “I am so honored to be recognized with this award by the established researchers and scientists at NIH.”
The NIH Common Fund supports a series of exceptionally high-impact programs that cross NIH Institutes and Centers. Common Fund programs pursue major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that require NIH-wide collaboration to succeed. In 2024, the NIH Common Fund awarded 67 High-Risk, High-Reward Research Awards, totaling approximately $207 million over five years, pending the availability of funds.
The Early Independence Award, established in 2011, provides an opportunity for exceptional junior scientists who have recently received their doctoral degree or completed their clinical training to bypass the traditional post-doctoral training period to launch independent research careers. This year, the NIH Common Fund issued 12 Early Independence Awards.
Dr. Craft’s research focuses on understanding how social contexts (e.g., social class and race) and individual differences (e.g., risk and resiliency) shape the behaviors and perceptions of underrepresented, underserved, and vulnerable populations. Specifically, she has focused on understanding how adversity is experienced psychologically and physically by mothers and fathers in the prenatal period, and how adversity is transmitted to infants through parents’ behaviors and stress hormones during the perinatal period. Her long-term objective is to develop and implement interventions to address perinatal health disparities and support new parents and children with the belief that if we can engage caregivers in needed intervention early in the perinatal period, we can intervene during a critical period of child development to promote positive long-term outcomes for children and caregivers.
“This project (Grant #: DP5 OD037403-01) was inspired by my research and clinical work; seeing first-hand the challenges families face becoming NICU parents - whether that be violated parenting expectations, birth trauma, mental health struggles, or balancing work-family demands on top of NICU parenting,” Dr. Craft shared. “In short, NICU parenting is hard, and I hope that through this project we can identify intervention targets to better support parents and families in the NICU.”
This award will provide $1.25 M in grant funding for Dr. Craft’s research over the next five years.
About Women & Infants Hospital
Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation’s leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. A major teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology, and newborn pediatrics, as well as a number of specialized programs in women’s medicine, Women & Infants is the ninth largest stand-alone obstetrical service in the country and the largest in New England with approximately 8,700 deliveries per year. Women & Infants is a Designated Baby-Friendly® USA hospital and was recently ranked by Newsweek as one of America's Best Maternity Hospitals in 2024. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology ranked 11 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 Best Medical Schools specialty ranking.
Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence by the American College of Radiography; a Center of Excellence in Minimally Invasive Gynecology; and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high-risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology, and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Maternal Fetal Medicine Units Network, and Pelvic Floors Disorders Network, as well as the National Cancer Institute’s Gynecologic Oncology Group.