Helping Give Away Psychological Science/Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Future Directions Forum (JCCAP FDF)

This is the page for the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology's (JCCAP) Future Directions Forum (FDF). It is held annually in June. Starting in 2018, The Forum will be held in Washington, DC, on the top floor of the American Psychological Association’s home office (www.spireeventsdc.com). Specifically, the JCCAP Future Directions Forum gives early-career scientists the tools to learn about emerging trends in child and adolescent mental health (CAMH), and succeed as academics within the “new frontiers” of interdisciplinary team science approaches to research. The Forum typically follows the format of 3-4 addresses on future directions topics as well as several workshops designed to help early-career scientists build their toolkit to be successful. Additionally, The Forum offers other programming such as grant consults, pocket labs, poster presentations, and the Future Directions Launch Award. The pages below will give a breakdown of the topics discussed during each year's Forum as well as provide YouTube links to recorded workshops and addresses.

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FDF Conference Coverage Pages

2017 JCCAP FDF	2018 JCCAP FDF	2019 JCCAP FDF	2020 JCCAP FDF	2021 JCCAP FDF	2022 JCCAP FDF

What is special about this conference?

The field of child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) increasingly leverages knowledge from multiple disciplines to understand, assess, prevent, and treat the mental health concerns of children and adolescents. As a field, CAMH thrives when its constituent disciplines—Psychology, Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Public Health, Public Policy, Social Work, Education, Nursing, and Neuroscience, among others—build bridges to work with one another in an effort to improve the mental health of children and adolescents worldwide. However, these bridges do not build themselves. As a leading journal in CAMH, the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (JCCAP) is in a unique position to leverage its status in the field to build bridges among CAMH disciplines. In fact, JCCAP publishes content with a large, interdisciplinary outreach. Regularly invited articles (i.e., Future Directions) seek to unite affiliated disciplines in CAMH, in that they focus on topics of relevance to the diverse disciplines that comprise CAMH. In an effort to further strengthen these connections, 2017 marked the launch of the JCCAP Future Directions Forum. This annual event showcases interdisciplinary work in CAMH, provides professional development training to early career scientists in CAMH, and raises public awareness of the “best and brightest” of this scientists-in-training. Specifically, the JCCAP Future Directions Forum gives early-career scientists the tools to learn about emerging trends in CAMH, and succeed as academics within the “new frontiers” of interdisciplinary team science approaches to research. The JCCAP Future Directions Forum achieves these goals in three ways:

Through invited addresses and panel discussions focused on the content of Future Directions articles, showcase emerging areas of interdisciplinary work in the field of CAMH
Through workshops and online resources, provide professional development training to all early career scientists who attend The Forum
Through research presentations, early career awards, and social media outreach raise international awareness of CAMH’s most promising early career scientists

Format

In previous years The Forum was held over the course of 2 days; however, since 2021, the format has changed to 3 days. Both formats (2 days and 3 days) are described below. The exception to this is that the 2022 forum was held in the format of a webinar series with several pieces of programming each month from July 2022 to December 2022.

2 Day Format (2017-2020)

Day 1: Professional Development Training

The Forum includes an opening day completely dedicated to professional development training. The Forum registration fee includes a “professional development workshop day” consisting of interactive sessions and panel discussions. Specifically, on Day 1, attendees receive professional development training that consists of live, interactive workshops on such topics as scientific writing style and productivity, peer review, and preparing training grant applications. Day 1 also includes panel discussions on issues of grant funding. Panelists consist of program officers from federal funding agencies with funding priorities that intersect with topics covered at the forum, such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Institute of Education Sciences.

Every year, new attendees of the forum receive exposure to the interactive workshops described previously, as well as attend panel discussions on grant funding. However, returning attendees have the opportunity to continue their education via online resources, and more intensive, personalized on-site sessions at the forum. Using this graduated scaling of professional development, the JCCAP Future Directions Forum seeks to build lasting relationships with its early career attendees, and ensure a growing and sustained attendance at the forum from year-to-year.

Day 2: Showcasing JCCAP’s Future Directions Content

Addresses: At each forum, leaders in the field who recently published Future Directions articles at JCCAP give formal addresses on the “next steps” of scientific research in their area of expertise. We hold these addresses on Day 2 of the forum. These addresses are based on the content of Future Directions articles written by the speakers.

Panel Discussions: Following each Future Directions Address, panel discussions serve as “brainstorming sessions” for new science that builds on research covered in the address. Attendees “break out” into one of several discussions moderated by faculty with expertise in the Future Directions content. These interactive discussions are organized by areas linked to the Future Directions Addresses (e.g., neuroscience, treatment, cross-cultural research). In advance of the forum, panel leaders identify publicly available resources for new research (e.g., public datasets, funding announcements). In turn, these panel discussions yield “deliverables” in that attendees develop both specific research aims, and concrete strategies for securing data or funding to test the aims. This format sparks “omnidirectional” discussions among panel leaders and attendees about new science along topics linked to the forum addresses. At our panel discussions, forum attendees make the future of science happen!

Days 1-2: Early Career Scientists: Celebrating Promising Research in Mental Health

Poster Session Socials: Before the forum, early career scientists submit abstracts of their research. At the forum, they make poster presentations of this research during catered social events. In advance of the forum, presenters are prompted via email to upload a single-slide Powerpoint file of their presentation. At the forum, we integrate these files into our own digital system to have them ready to present during the poster session socials. Thus, all poster presentations are digitally presented, saving presenters both time and money. Poster session socials take place during the evenings of the forum. Further, these events provide early career scientists with opportunities for “one-on-one” time with scientists who gave addresses during the forum.

Future Directions Launch Award: Before the forum, a committee of internationally recognized scientists selects several promising early career scientists who are presenting their research at the forum to receive a widely-publicized award: the Future Directions Launch Award. The award recognizes early career scientists conducting research in the Future Directions Address topics covered that year (i.e., one awardee for each Future Directions Address topic). At an award ceremony held during the forum, awardees give TED Talk-style presentations about their work. We stream these presentations live, store them, and link them to a major media dissemination platform (e.g., YouTube). The Future Directions Launch Award serves as a capstone to the academic training of its recipients—a signal to the field and larger public that they are ready to enter academia and begin independent research careers.

3 Day Format

Day 1

Days 1 begins with workshops and professional development. There are usually 2 tracks for workshops and attendees can pick which workshops they attend. There are 2 workshop sessions before concluding the day with the first Future Directions Address and discussion related to the address.

Day 2

Day 2 begins with one set of workshops where attendees can pick which one they attend. Then, the day transitions to the Launch Award winners presentations and the second day concludes with the second Future Directions Address and discussion.

Day 3

The final day of The Forum begins with another set of workshops where attendees can pick which one they attend. Next is the poster Q&A session where poster presenters are available to answer questions about their research. the day concludes with the final Future Directions Address and discussion.

Benefits to society

Over the last 50 years, the field of CAMH has made enormous contributions to society. Scientists in the field produced accurate, reliable diagnostic tools, allowing clinicians to identify children and adolescents in need of care. CAMH scientists developed effective, evidence-based treatments, allowing children and adolescents to work through their challenges and learn coping skills. Now, the field needs a new generation of scientists to solve the field’s most pressing problems. For instance, although some children and adolescents benefit from receiving mental health treatments, roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of all those treated receive little-to-no benefits. Why do these problems persist? A key issue involves poor understanding of the factors that cause children and adolescents to develop mental health concerns. As a result, the field has a lot to learn about why mental health treatments “work,” and for whom these treatments work best. The next generation of scientists in the field need to solve these problems. However, these problems require the collective action of all disciplines affiliated with CAMH. The CAMH field needs the next generation of scientists in CAMH to learn to build bridges among its constituent disciplines. Further, beyond the “book smarts” they acquire in the classroom, early career scientists need the “street smarts” to succeed in academia. Few of them take a class in writing great journal articles, communicating ideas during a job interview, or writing successful grant proposals. If society’s early career scientists do not “make it,” then progress in CAMH stalls, and society would settle for mental health treatments that help only a fraction of those who receive them. The JCCAP Future Directions Forum meets these needs by providing early career scientists exposure to interdisciplinary research in CAMH, and the fuel to become great academics!

Location

The JCCAP Future Directions Forum is held annually in June. Starting in 2018, the Forum will be held in Washington, DC, on the top floor of the American Psychological Association’s home office. 2020 and 2021 Forums were held online due to COVID-19. The 2022 Forum will be held in a different format as a webinar series throughout the summer and fall of 2022. For more information on this year's Forum, please visit the website here.

Further information

Each year's Forum has a page that lists the address and workshops with links to view the recording for those we were able to record. Each year's page also has the Launch Award winners with links to view their remarks.

Thanks to Dr. De Los Reyes for the vision and leadership to build the conference; to SCCAP, the American Psychological Association, and the University of Maryland for the support and resources to make the inaugural conference possible, and to the team of research assistants, students, and colleagues that did a wonderful job making the FDF such a success!