Yale Child Study Center Annual Associates Meeting: The Impact of the Digital World on Children's Health

The 2024 annual meeting of the YCSC Associates was held in person in the Cohen Auditorium, with keynote speaker Andrew Solomon, PhD, renowned author and National Book Award winner. Leading up to the keynote, participants will hear from several leading experts on topics surrounding the theme of this year's meeting, the impact of the digital world on children's health. YCSC Chair Linda Mayes, MD, provided opening remarks and served as the meeting facilitator. Scroll down for the full meeting agenda. A reception followed the afternoon sessions, held in the Yale Medical Historical Library.

A video recording of the afternoon sessions is available to view on SharePoint. Virtual posters and supplemental videos can also be viewed on demand, along with supplemental resources with select publications and podcast links. Links to these web-based meeting components are included under related links, along with a link to the feedback form. Please consider submitting feedback if you attended in person, viewed the Zoom simulcast, or upon watching the recording when available.

Meeting Agenda

1:00-1:10 Linda Mayes, MD: Welcome & Opening Remarks

1:10-1:40 Featured Speakers: Group 1

• Uche Aneni, MBBS: Bridging gaps in access to adolescent substance use prevention using digital interventions
• Patrick Luyten, PhD: The role of early adversity & epistemic trust in problematic social media use in young people
• Katherine Battle, PhD: Social media as a behavioral addiction

1:40-2:10 Featured Speakers: Group 2

• Adam Naples, PhD & Cara Keifer, PhD: Mood & social media use in autism
• Nicholas Vecchiarelli, LPC: Protective & risk factors in online community building for youth with autism
• Roger Jou, MD: Cultural autism studies at Yale: A transformation into the transformative

2:10-2:20 Break

2:20-2:50 Featured Speakers: Group 3

• Carrie Epstein, LCSW: Trauma treatment reimagined: How telehealth & digital technologies are transforming access to evidence-based trauma-focused care 
• Chris Cipriano, PhD: A crime of humanity: The case for social & emotional learning
• Preston Ebaugh, MD: Social media & risks for youth in emergency psychiatry

2:50-3:20 Featured Speakers: Group 4

• Kim Hieftje, PhD: The power of augmented, mixed, & virtual reality for child health & wellness
• Christine Cha, PhD: Taking a leap of faith: Teen self-disclosure of suicide risk
• Marc Brackett, PhD: Keeping AI real with EI: Preserving what it means to be human

3:20-3:30 Break

3:30-4:30 Andrew Solomon, PhD: Keynote Address

This annual meeting engages participants in presentations focused on the multi-faceted missions of the Yale Child Study Center. These sessions, historically provided in-person, shifted to a virtual format in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, a virtual poster session, supplemental videos, and recordings of the live sessions have been made available on-line. This year's meeting was the first held in-person since pre-pandemic, though a virtual component was also made available leading up to and following the event, including a variety of virtual posters, informational videos, and supplemental resources available on-line.