Medical student Andrew Rock will present his research “Obesity trajectories and risk of frailty later in life,” at the Presidential Poster Session at the American Geriatrics Society 2015 Annual Scientific Meeting. The meeting will be held May 15-17, in National Harbor, Maryland. Co-authors on the abstract are GREMAP member Dr. Briana Mezuk and GREMAP alumnus Dr. Matthew Lohman, along with Dr. Richard Payne of Duke University School of Medicine. Additional meeting details can be found here. 

Datapalooza was a success! Dr. Elizabeth Prom-Wormley has directed a community-engaged survey within the Health and Wellness Initiative (HWI) to assess the needs of residents in the East End of Richmond and organized Datapalooza to explore the results of this survey. HWI staff and partners, community leaders, local organizations, student researchers, and East End residents all came together on November 15^th to participate in Datapalooza. GREMAP members Natalie Bareis and Katherine Crawford also helped out with this event. 

 

Residents began the day creating a “Wall of Wellness,” where everyone was encouraged to create a sign describing what a culture of wellness in the East End means to them.

 

After reviewing the preliminary results of the survey, everyone collaborated to reach a common goal for the evening, which was to work towards creating a culture of “collected wellness” for Richmond’s East End. 

 

Residents then broke into teams to review the data sets with the help of data analysts. 

 

The group identified “next steps” to use the knowledge gained from Datapalooza: 1) Develop a comprehensive resource and services guide for East End residents, 2) Create a summary doument and strategy by which to develop legislative advocacy for mental health issues in the East End, and 3) Host a celebratory Datapalooza results-related event for the residents. Click here for more information on the 7th District Health and Wellness Survey. 

 

Many of our GREMAP members presented at the American Public Health Association (APHA) 2014 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Doctoral student Monique Brown presented posters titled “Adverse childhood experiences and age at sexual debut among sexual minorities,” “Adverse childhood experiences and intimate partner violence perpetration: A mediational analysis,” and “Adverse childhood experiences and HIV/STIs: A Mediational Analysis.” 

Doctoral student Lena Jaggi gave a talk titled “Trauma, PTSD and incarceration history in a nationally representative sample of African Americans.” 

Dr. Jeannie Concha and Julia Foutz presented a poster titled “Stress and coping among African Americans at risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus.” 

Dr. Concha presenting at APHA.

Dr. Steve Cohen gave talks titled “Emerging caregiver burden domains in the new National Study of Caregiving: Results, reliability, and applications” and “Associations between caregiving intensity and caregiver burden in ‘sandwiched’ caregivers: Results from the new National Study of Caregiving.” Dr. Cohen also presented a poster titled “Measurement matters in rural-urban health disparities: Regional variation in obesity-rurality associations in older adults based on choice of rurality scale.” 

GREMAP members and alumni presented at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) 2014 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. 

Dr. Briana Mezuk presented talks titled “Hearts and minds, stress and sugar: Disparities and differences in mental and physical health” and “Racial differences in self-regulatory stress coping behaviors in older adults: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).” 

Dr. Mezuk with fellow panel members at GSA. 

Dr. Jeannie Concha gave a talk titled “Ethnic identity, socioeconomic status, and diabetes in aging Latinos: Evidence of ethnic identity as an underlying mechanism of the Latino health advantage.” 

Dr. Concha speaking at GSA.

Dr. Steve Cohen gave a talk titled “Protecting the health of ‘sandwiched’ caregivers: Associations between caregiving intensity and four domains of caregiver burden among sandwich generation caregivers from the new National Study of Caregivers.” 

Doctoral student Monique Brown presented a poster titled “Psychopathology and HIV diagnosis among older adults in the US.” Monique was awarded the Emerging Scholar and Professional Organization Poster Award.

Dr. Cohen supporting Monique after receiving the Emerging Scholar and Professional Organization Poster Award at GSA. 

GREMAP alumnus Kristen Rice, Research Consultant, Lewin Group, presented a poster titled “Long-term care and offspring mental health: Evidence for the Health and Retirement Study.” 

GREMAP alumnus Dr. Moon Choi, Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky, College of Social Work, presented two posters titled “The relationship between self-rated memory and driving behaviors among community-living older adults: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study,” and “News and portrayal of older drivers.” 

In early October Dr. Mezuk visited Tilberg University in Tilberg, Netherlands where she gave a talk entitled “Integrating social psychology and biology to examine the sources of social disparities in diabetes risk” at the Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases (CoRPS). While there she met with Dr. Frans Pouwer, an international expert on the role of psychosocial factors in diabetes risk. She also traveled to Malmo, Sweden to meet with Drs. Jan and Kristina Sundquist at the Centre for Primary Care Research at Lund University to continue work on their project on the contribution of neighborhood factors to depression and diabetes risk.

Dr. Steve Cohen has been featured in an APHA podcast regarding immunizations in the aging population. The podcast is available at getreadyforflu.org. 

 

 

 

GREMAP doctoral student Natalie Bareis has helped author a paper published in Molecular Psychiatry. The paper, “Depression, anxiety and telomere length in young adults: evidence from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey” is available on the Nature website.

 

 

In the spirit of “The Dude,” GREMAP goes bowling to kick off the Fall 2014 semester!