Fisher, PhilipHorn, Sarah2024-01-092024-01-092024-01-09https://hdl.handle.net/1794/29103The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has posited unique challenges for families and significantly disrupted several aspects of children’s environments. The pandemic is an ongoing risk experience, with young children being repeatedly exposed to multiple stressors, such as school closures, social isolation, material hardship, and worsening mental health. For child welfare service involved (CWS) families, these stressors may be amplified in both frequency and severity. For both caregivers and children, the pandemic-related cumulative environmental risk may also be reflected in parallel physiologic and neurobiological processes, such as the immune system. Alterations to immune level functioning may in turn correlate to children’s current mental health and impact their future response to available support systems and life stressors. Using a longitudinal design, I evaluated the degree to which parental stressors, parent and child inflammation (C-reactive protein, assayed via dried blood spots), and parent and child outcomes changed from before the pandemic to during the pandemic. I investigated associations underlying these complex relationships. Pre-pandemic data was collected on 22 parent-child dyads between 2016-2019 and pandemic data was collected between August 2021- December 2021.As predicted, household chaos significantly increased during the pandemic but was unexpectedly inversely associated with child’s inflammation. Contrary to predictions, child’s mental health symptoms (i.e., behavioral problems and trauma symptoms) and parenting stress decreased from the pre-pandemic time point to the current study, though this was primarily accounted for by the child’s age. Parent anxiety did not significantly change between timepoints. Parent depressive symptoms increased during the pandemic and parent inflammation significantly interacted with parent depression to predict the intensity of children’s behavioral problems. Parent and child inflammation both increased between the pre-pandemic time point to the current study, though this change was not statistically significant. This initial pilot study identified important patterns among parent mental health, inflammation, and child well-being that should be evaluated in a larger sample. Further research will help to inform intervention efforts designed for parents and children most impacted by the pandemic.en-USAll Rights Reserved.childcovid-19inflammationmental healthpandemicElectronic Thesis or Dissertation