URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2019_Melissa-McCarthy

“I believe that this huge vulnerability, particularly during a sensitive period of brain development can have long-term health impacts.”

- Amy D’Agata

When discussing the potentially traumatic experience of infants, D’Agata encountered concerns from some clinicians about the word “trauma” in relationship to what infants experience in the NICU. Through research conducted in focus groups, she found that the word “trauma” can be difficult for some clinicians to reconcile. “It’s difficult when you’re faced every day with saving lives and providing care in ways that can be unpleasant. Sometimes clinicians have to protect themselves in this process,” she explains. “Thinking about being an agent of trauma, the one doing something to someone else that is traumatic, can be difficult to consider.” Recently D’Agata submitted a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health that, if awarded, will allow her to jumpstart a five-year study with Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island. The study will follow 165 infants born prematurely, between 28 and 32 gestational weeks, to examine the impact of their NICU stress experience, inflammation and gene transcription during their first year of life. She is particularly eager to integrate this research into her teaching at URI. Since joining the University in the fall of 2017, D’Agata says she has been struck by the collegiality and professionalism within the University’s College of Nursing, and she is eager to collaborate with students and other faculty interested in preterm infant research.

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