A Presentation by Rie Masuda, MPH, PhD candidate
with Paul Lanier, PhD, as a host and moderator
Thursday, February 20, 2020
12 pm–1:30 pm, Room 300, UNC School of Social Work | Directions
Lunch will be provided. Bring your own drink.
Ensuring universal early childhood education is an important but undeveloped policy issue both in Japan and the US. The effectiveness of early childhood education has been conventionally evaluated based on the development of cognitive and socioemotional skills. However, the effects of pre-primary education on child health is an understudied research topic. A few prior studies, such as the Carolina Abecedarian Project, have addressed long-term health consequences of preschool student and suggest that attending intensive pre-primary education programs decreased lifestyle-related diseases for decades after the intervention. This presentation of findings from a rigorous quasi-experimental study focuses on short-term and disease-specific effects of pre-primary education using child severe asthma as an outcome. Despite dissimilar educational systems between the US and Japan, results suggest early childhood education may decrease child severe asthma.
Rie Masuda is a PhD candidate from the University of Tokyo and prior visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2017-2018). She had been a Public Health Nurse at Shinjuku City, Tokyo, and served in the field of maternal & child health, and mental health. She was a member of a child abuse prevention team that identified and provided supportive services to high-risk families. Now she focuses on child health and child maltreatment as a doctoral candidate.
