Mothering matters. Nearly 15 percent of new mothers in the United States experience some degree of postpartum depression and anxiety — approximately 400,000 each year. According to the National Institutes of Health, postpartum mood disorders are both underdiagnosed and undertreated, resulting in myriad physical, social, and emotional problems as the children of these mothers grow older.

Ruth Paris, an SSW assistant professor of clinical practice, and coinvestigators Emily Feinberg and Jennifer Goldman-Fraser, SPH research associates, and M. Katherine Weinberg at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital, hope to determine if providing early support for mothers at risk can make a difference. They are evaluating a program developed by Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Boston, known as Early Connections, in which professionals with experience and training in infant and parent mental health meet weekly with at-risk mothers and their infants in their homes. They listen to the mothers, encourage them to talk about how they are feeling, and provide emotional support and psychotherapeutic treatment. They also offer information about child development and help the mothers build skills so they can better care for themselves and their child.

The researchers will use questionnaires and videotaped sessions to evaluate the interactions between the mothers and their infants before and immediately after the period of intervention (which will vary from a few weeks to several months, according to the mother’s needs) and again six months later.

Paris and her colleagues hypothesize that as a result of the program, mothers will experience fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, feel better about themselves as mothers, and feel a stronger attachment to their infant. The researchers also expect that mother-infant interactions will improve, with mothers being better able to understand and respond to their infant’s cues, alleviate distress, and better support their child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development.

The researchers plan to share their results with clinical and administrative staff of Early Connections as well as to produce a preliminary treatment manual that can be adopted by other agencies.

This research project has been funded by one of nine Special Program for Research Innovation Grants (SPRInG) awarded this year by the Office of the Provost. SPRInG is designed to support preliminary work that has a good likelihood of later gaining external funding for an expanded research program. Paris expects to apply to the National Institute of Mental Health, which has made research on postpartum depression a priority, for support for a more extensive research program.

The cruelest season. For the 36 million Americans who have seasonal allergic rhinitis, or hay fever, spring is a mixed blessing, bringing soaring pollen counts and runny noses along with beautiful blossoms. The science of pollen counting, however, is woefully primitive, according to Richard Primack, a CAS and GRS biology professor and Xiaoyang Zhang, a CAS and GRS geography assistant professor. Primack and Zhang are devising a new model to more accurately predict the severity of an oncoming pollen season with support from a 2005 SPRInG grant from the Office of the Provost.

Currently scientists identify and collect pollen grains on small surfaces to produce the pollen counts broadcast on the evening news. There are only a few monitoring stations in each region of the nation — metropolitan Boston, for example, has only one such station.

The new method the researchers propose will be much more comprehensive, able to cover large geographic areas. It combines data from three sources: remote sensing from satellites showing when plants and trees produce new leaves, ground-based data tracking when flowers bloom and pollen is produced, and public health data on the incidence of pollen allergy attacks in the population.

The researchers will examine the relationship between satellite detection of leaf-out and the timing of leaf-out of trees observed on the ground. They will calculate the relationship between when leaf-out occurs and when flowers and pollen are released for oaks, birches and maples — trees known to be allergenic. They will also examine the impact of such factors as temperature and the duration of the flowering season and how it relates to the duration of pollen in the air.

By understanding how the timing and magnitude of these factors interact, the researchers hope to develop a model, based solely on remotely sensed leaf-out data, that can predict when, and how potent, the coming allergy season will be.