Dr. Briana Mezuk’s research has been featured in Richmond Magazine’s recent article, “Is Stress Killing Black Men?“. This article, which discusses current research on the relationship between stress and health disparities, includes quotes from an interview with Dr. Mezuk about her research on stress and diabetes.

GREMAP member Viktoryia Kalesnikava has been awarded a Jessie Hibbs/Marian Waller scholarship by the VCU/MCV Women’s Club and the Graduate School of Virginia Commonwealth University. This scholarship is awarded to two female graduate students each year in recognition of outstanding academic achievement.

Congratulations Viktoryia!!

GREMAP member Elizabeth Do was one of 28 PhD students accepted nationwide to attend a two-week NIH training course in Clinical and Translational Research. After her return to VCU, she shared what she learned at a student talk hosted by the VCU Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Details regarding the talk and the training course can be found in the VCU CCTR blog.

VCU’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research has written a news article featuring Dr. Briana Mezuk. The article focusses on her exciting work on the bidirectional relationship between depression and diabetes.

GREMAP PhD student Natalie Bareis attended the 18th annual conference of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders in Amsterdam. At the conference, she gave a presentation titled “Client Centered Treatment to Optimize Psychiatric Medication Adherence: Empirically Identifying the Construct of Clinical Net Benefit”

This presentation demonstrates the concept of the client-centered conceptual framework Clinical Net Benefit, using the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD). This is a three dimensional model of individuals’ balance between tolerating: 1) psychiatric symptom reduction, 2) adverse effects from medications, and 3) overall functioning when taking psychiatric medications and resulting levels of adherence to those specific medications. Using latent class techniques to identify unique classes of Clinical Net Benefit can aid mental health practitioners in tailoring medication regimens by determining the class their client belongs to and the resulting medication regimens that have the highest adherence rates.

 

GREMAP is expanding west! Dr. Jeannie Concha is heading (back) to the University of Texas at El Paso to be an Assistant Professor in the College of Health Sciences in September.

Congratulations Jeannie!!

 

PREP student Joshua Montgomery presented his poster “Food insecurity and depression among adults with diabetes and pre-diabetes” at the 76th annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans, LA.

Congratulations Josh!

The VCU Council for Community Engagement has held an event celebrating community-engaged work, during which they celebrated the awarding of six community engagement grants to university researchers and programs. One of the grant recipients was GREMAP’s Dr. Briana Mezuk, who has recently received a grant fro the Council for Community Engagement for a community partnership with the YMCA of greater Richmond focussed on research and programs for diabetes management.