This month we are highlighting National Birth Defects Prevention Month. Dr. May has been, and is currently, the principal investigator of clinical and epidemiologic studies funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research the characteristics of the continuum of FASD in the general populations of South Africa, United States, and Italy. He and his colleagues have focused on refining the diagnostic criteria for the FASD continuum, defining maternal risk and protective factors for FASD, and uncovering and quantifying the wide variation of outcomes and phenotypic traits of children who have been exposed to alcohol in the prenatal period. He will present data on studies of first grade children in the United States overall, South Africa, and focus on findings on FASD among children and their mothers in a county in the Southeastern region of the USA. FASD are prevalent today in the United States and are pernicious health disparities that no individual should have to endure.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the common characteristics and traits of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). 
• Identify the maternal risk factors associated with FASD in the Southeastern USA and other regions and countries. 
• Describe the prevalence of FASD in four regions of the United States including the Southeast. 
• Understand the range of opportunities for prevention of, intervention upon, and mitigation of the most severe impacts of prenatal alcohol exposure on children.

About the Presenters:

Dr. Philip A. May is a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Gillings School of Global Public Health where he works from the UNC Nutrition Institute as an epidemiologist. His research over the past 25 years has been primarily on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD): prevalence, child characteristics, maternal risk factors, prevention and intervention. He served as a member of the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Study Committee on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (1994-1996). In 2018 he received one of the two highest awards from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) when he delivered the Mark Keller Honorary Lecture at NIH. Also, he has been honored with the Henry Rosett Research Award from the FASD Study Group of the Research Society on Alcoholism, an Excellence Award from the National Organization Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and he has twice delivered the Geoffrey Robinson Memorial Keynote Presentation at the International Conference on FASD.

Dr. Julia Hasken is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked for the past 10 years to carry out epidemiological studies on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). She has co-authored over 25 publications focusing on the prevalence, child characteristics, and maternal risk factors of FASD in the United States and South Africa.

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