In 2019, Dr. Muhammad Zeshan invited Alex to give workshops at medical centers in Pakistan on the subject of infant-parent mental health in the following cities:

Karachi: Aga Khan University (Medical College); Dow University of Health Science (Medical College); Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC)

Multan: Nishtar Medical University; Children Hospital Multan

Muzaffargarh: Indus Hospital

Lahore: Mayo Hospital

As a result of the interest they generated and the collaborations they initiated, the SCC Pakistan project began to take shape.

During the 2019 trip, Alex met Dr. Shazia Parveen, who became a central member of the team. Shazia explained that as a pediatrician she learned all about how to prevent and cure medical illnesses but nothing about how to protect infant neurodevelopment. In our demonstration of the newborn behavioral observations (NBOs) during the workshops, she found what she had been looking for—a preventive intervention. In 2020, under the remote guidance of Alex and Muhammad, Shazia performed 44 NBOs on village babies and their mothers. As a result of this work, Shazia was accepted into a Brazelton Institute NBO training at Boston Children’s Hospital and is now a certified NBO practitioner.

In 2021, this NBO work inspired Supporting Child Caregivers to plan an infant-parent mental health training for front-line caregivers, the lady health workers (LHWs), and to evaluate the outcome of this training in South Punjab. This training, an adaptation of the “Protect, Nurture, and Enjoy” training for nursing students in North India, which we now call "Building Baby Brains" (BBB), is designed to build the capacity of lady health workers to support the infant-parent relationship and in that way buffer the infant’s developing nervous system from environmental stressors associated with chronic poverty. We are almost finished creating the materials for this training. Our collaborators in this training are the Department of Health of South Punjab and the government office of the lady health workers program. Our collaborators in the outcome study are faculty and medical students at Nishtar Medical University. We hope to give the training at the end of the summer and begin the study in the Fall of 2021.

The Pakistan team has also presented its work at national and international conferences. For more details of the presentations, click here.