UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jennie Noll, director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network and professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, has been invited to serve as a member of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Strategic Planning Working Group.

Noll’s role as part of the prestigious group will be to develop a new strategic plan for NICHD for the first time in 18 years and identify scientific priorities for the institute’s efforts and contribution to the health of children, families and communities across the nation. The new strategic plan will help develop scientific priorities; ensure that resources are appropriately aligned with those priorities; and identify the training, career development and partnership opportunities needed to maximize NICHD's contribution to the health of children, families and communities. 

The Child Maltreatment Solutions Network advances Penn State’s academic mission of teaching, research and engagement in the area of child maltreatment. Since the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network was launched in fall 2012, its conferences have established a concrete frontier of understanding child maltreatment through advanced research. It is part of the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State.