Dr. Benard Philip Dreyer, MD

The work of my group has focused on the problems of poor immigrant families living in urban environments. We have studied the effects of family homelessness on growth of development and health status of children. We have looked at the effect of environmental toxins, such as lead, on early childhood development. And we have tested low-intensity clinic-based interventions that have the potential to improve early childhood language and cognitive development as well as parent-child interactions. Recently, we have begun looking at the effect of media violence on child behavior, and have begun to explore the factors associated with childhood obesity. Finally, we are looking at novel methods to improve parent understanding by the use of pictograms and plain language materials to communicate with parents with low health literacy.