Category: Past News

Over 20 years of research by OIBR Distinguished Scholar, Robert Vandenberg, the Robert O. Arnold Professor of Business and head of the department of management at the Terry College of Business, at the University of Georgia indicates workplace-based health and wellness programs can offer a variety of positive effects for both workers and their employers.

Author: J. Merritt Melancon
More info. about this research: Robert Vandenberg

The Team Impact Award recognizes the critical contributions made by crosscutting teams in addressing today’s complex challenges. Specifically, the award recognizes a team for excellence in innovative and impactful scholarship that either has or soon promises to fundamentally advance knowledge, understanding and/or applications in ways not achievable by individual investigators or single disciplinary approaches alone.

The members of Team RISE—Resilient Infrastructure for Sustainability and Equity—are Brian Bledsoe, Jon Calabria, Shana Jones, Don Nelson, J. Scott Pippin and Mark Risse. RISE includes both academic and public service faculty from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, Marine Extension-Georgia Sea Grant, the College of Engineering, the College of Environment and Design, and the Department of Anthropology. Over the past several years, they have demonstrated exceptional collaboration and synergy, leading to significant academic research, applied research and technical assistance, as well as generating an impressive number of funding awards. Collaborating through the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, the members are advancing the integration of natural and conventional infrastructure systems to strengthen society’s long-term resilience to flooding, sea level rise, drought and other disruptions. By collaboratively integrating interdisciplinary research and outreach expertise, they are empowering communities to discover wise infrastructure solutions that deliver a broad array of social, economic and environmental benefits.

Don Nelson, an affiliate with the Owens Institute and a professor in the Department of Anthropology, has over 20 years of national and international experience in drought risk management, social vulnerability and participatory approaches to natural resource management. His work focuses on the human dimensions of climate variability, the role of scientific information in resource management, and how social and political relations shape decision-making and policy outcomes. A member of IRIS’s leadership team, Nelson co-leads project development and directs and conducts team research. He leads the team’s development of the NSF’s coastlines and people proposal to develop a resilience hub using the military-community interface as study areas. He is a key faculty member for the recently funded Research and Development Cooperative Agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers. Nelson also is central to the NSF proposal to establish an Engineering Research Center for Sustainably Engineered Riverine-Coastal Systems at UGA.

Jennifer L. Gay, OIBR affiliate and associate professor of Health Promotion and Behavior in the school of Public Health, has been awarded the 2022 Creative Teaching Award.

The UGA Creative Teaching Awards are presented annually on behalf of the Office of Instruction to faculty who have demonstrated exceptional creativity in using either an innovative technology or pedagogy that extends learning beyond the traditional classroom or for their creative course design or implementation of subject matter that improves student learning outcomes in their courses.

Dr. Gay uses supportive coaching and small learning milestones to help students learn needed skills. In her inclusive class, students can “choose their own adventure” for project topics. They set the knowledge, skills and degree of competence they would like to pursue. In each module, students submit practice assignments that prime them for the successful completion of a semester-long project. Each assignment receives extensive feedback, and if competency has not been reached, the student can try again, incorporating the feedback into their revision, until they establish competence. By learning from revisions, students establish a mastery of the subject matter.

 

Jeremy Gibbs, OIBR affiliate and assistant professor in the School of Social Work, has received a 2022 First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award in recognition of his success for teaching a FYO Seminar.

The FYO Teaching Award recognizes outstanding instructors who have demonstrated creativity or innovation in instruction, connection to the instructor’s research and incorporation of FYOS program goals into the seminar. This year’s recipients have been fully engaged with their students, provided them with a strong connection to the university through their research and other activities and tied their curriculum directly to FYOS program goals.

Dr. Gibbs emphasizes critical thinking and innovative learning processes in his First-Year Odyssey Seminar, “Queer Voices: LGBTQ Social Issues Through the Lens of Movies and TV.” In the course, students watch LGBTQ-related films and have meaningful discussions. One week the class focuses on “coming out,” where Gibbs shares research findings related to the risks and benefits of coming out, acceptance, rejection and depression. The class is not about having the “correct” answer, but about critical thinking. The goal is to engage students intellectually and emotionally to illicit cognitive curiosity. One popular assignment is for students to present a music video to the class and analyze the content. The seminar also features in-class quizzes and surveys students can complete using smartphones. Instead of a lecture on terminology, students compete in a Kahoot online quiz game—that makes learning fun and exciting.

 

OIBR Distinguished Scholar Julie Stanton has been selected for the 2022 Russell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

The Russell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching recognize excellence in undergraduate instruction by faculty members in their early academic careers. The awards were first presented in 1992 by the Richard B. Russell Foundation to honor Richard B. Russell, a distinguished Georgian and University alumnus who had a love for new knowledge and appreciation of our nation’s youth.

 

 

2022 Charles B. Knapp Early Scholar awarded to Man Kit “Karlo” Lei.

This award is named in honor of the University of Georgia’s 20th president, and recognizes outstanding accomplishment and evidence of potential future success in scholarship, creative work or research by an early career faculty member in the social and behavioral sciences.

Man Kit “Karlo” Lei, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and an OIBR affiliate, combines interdisciplinary theories and methods to examine the social determinants of health and aging across the lifespan, with a particular focus on minority populations and disadvantaged communities. His research focuses on two research questions: How do social stressors “get under the skin” and affect well-being? Why do some people, but not others, thrive despite facing adversity? He is a rare triple-threat scholar skilled in sociological theories, genetic and biological data, and advanced statistical models. His research has made advances in understanding and addressing social and environmental factors that can become embedded biologically via gene expression and, in turn, foster pathological physiology and onset of illness. A co-investigator on three NIH grants totaling more than $7 million, his revolutionary research blends rigor in basic science and novel approaches to treat and prevent chronic illness.

Gregory Strauss receives 2022 Creative Research Medal. This medal is awarded for outstanding research or creative activity within the past five years that focuses on a single theme identified with the University of Georgia.

OIBR distinguished scholar, Greg Strauss, and an associate professor of psychology, utilized a new assessment technique called “digital phenotyping” to characterize and improve treatment of anhedonia, a symptom of schizophrenia. Scientists have long believed that anhedonia is an incapacity to experience pleasure. Strauss and his team tested that assumption by having study participants carry smartphones and other devices fitted with sensors that record physiological and other responses to events. Participants recorded videos of their facial and vocal emotions and responded to daily surveys. Strauss and his team pioneered complex algorithms for analyzing this data to understand how participants reacted when exposed to potentially enjoyable activities and how their pleasure persisted over time. Results show that participants do experience pleasure. However, they have difficulty anticipating pleasure, and their pleasurable experiences degrade rapidly. Pharmaceutical companies are adopting these technologies in psychiatric trials, and the tools could provide better ways to identify and assess features of this disease.

 

OIBR director and psychology professor, Lillian Eby, Ph.D., received the 2022 Distinguished Research Professor award.

The title of Distinguished Research Professor is awarded to UGA faculty who are internationally recognized for their original contributions to knowledge and whose work promises to foster continued creativity in their discipline.

Dr. Eby is one of the world’s leading industrial-organizational psychology scholars. She studies employee health and well-being, addressing workers’ relationships inside and outside the workplace. She is best known for her groundbreaking, enduring studies of workplace and other types of mentoring relationships. She contributed some of the first and most highly cited research on the dynamics of mentoring relationships and published three large-scale meta-analyses of the literature, integrating hundreds of primary studies. A leading expert on the occupational health of substance abuse treatment workers, she conducted large-scale, longitudinal and methodologically rigorous studies of occupational health among this high-stress population. She translated her empirical findings about major drivers of burnout and turnover into actionable recommendations for organizations and individual workers. She is the author of 110 peer-reviewed journal publications and 28 book chapters and the co-editor of three influential books. Her works average almost 3,000 citations per year.

Yan Jin leads FDA sponsored research to gather evidence to guide future messaging.

In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Georgia (UGA) were collaborating with researchers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Office of Communications to develop and test messaging strategies that can help overcome misinformation that arises during public health emergencies.

Brooke Fisher Liu, professor in UMD’s Department of Communication, and Yan Jin, OIBR Distinguished Scholar and professor of public relations and Georgia Athletic Association Professor at UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, will develop and test message strategies concerning vital health information that can help keep people safe.

“Past research found a clear link between COVID-19 misinformation exposure and vaccine hesitancy,” said Liu, the project’s principal investigator. “Research also connects misinformation exposure to lower compliance with government health and safety guidance. In short, misinformation is just as great of a threat to public health as the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, but our knowledge is limited on how to combat misinformation.”

Through two large-scale experiments on how messages containing misinformation and various types of responses are interpreted by U.S. adults, the researchers will be among the first to explore how public health misinformation can be corrected through strategic risk communication and what methods work best in thwarting misinformation.

“This project exemplifies the importance and promising future for more collaborative risk and crisis communication research across universities and with the government to provide theory-driven, evidenced-based insights to protect public health and safety,” said Jin, the project’s co-principal investigator.

The FDA is investing nearly $225,000 to fund the three-year project, which began in October 2021. The research team will  recommend best practices for how public health agencies can combat health misinformation for the COVID-19 pandemic and future threats.

The team defines misinformation as a claim of fact that is false due to a lack of scientific evidence or conflicting scientific evidence. The researchers will conduct online experiments gathering information on how adults respond to medical and health misinformation. The research team will also provide a targeted deep-dive analysis of previous research to identify best communication practices that promote safety during public health crises.

Liu and Jin are two of the leading risk and crisis communication scholars in the world. Their collaborative work dates back to 2001, when they both studied in the graduate program at the Missouri School of Journalism. They are joined by Tori McDermott, graduate research assistant from the UMD, and Xuerong Lu, graduate research assistant from the UGA.

“It is a great opportunity for me, as a young scholar in crisis communication, to collaborate with Dr. Liu and Dr. Jin to significantly advance research and practice in misinformation management,” said Lu.

The research findings will provide an opportunity to address real-time challenges, and the lessons learned from them, to guide future leadership decisions in health communication. The mission behind this research is to equip authorities with communication to respond to misinformation in a way that protects public health and safety.

“As an emerging scholar, I am so grateful to work on a project of this magnitude not only to help mitigate the negative effects of infodemics, but also to learn from Dr. Liu and Dr. Jin how scholarship can inform and change practice and policy to better society,” said McDermott.

Author:  Dayne Young,  dayne@uga.edu
More information about this project: Yan Jin

Young adults who experienced trauma in childhood are more at risk for misusing prescription opioids, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

The study, which was recently published in the Journal of American College Health, supports arguments to expand opioid risk screeners to include adverse childhood experiences.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) describe a range of stressors, some more severe than others, that can lead to negative health outcomes as an adult. These can range from having divorced parents to experiencing domestic violence or food insecurity.

Previous studies have linked childhood trauma to chronic health conditions, chronic pain, mental health conditions and health risk behaviors, including illicit drug use. But it’s unclear whether ACEs might influence prescription drug misuse and, in particular, prescription opioid misuse.

“People tend to use painkillers in different ways. Some of us are more welcoming to using medications to manage pain. Others are not. There is not much in the literature on pain tolerance,” said study author Janani Thapa, OIBR Affiliate and associate professor in UGA’s College of Public Health.

Opioid misuse is growing among young adults ages 18 to 25, now outpacing abuse among other groups. So, could adverse childhood experiences play a role in how young adults manage pain and opioid use?

To explore this question, the researchers surveyed 1,402 college students from a large southeast university. The participants answered questions related to ACEs, health status and behaviors associated with prescription opioid abuse.

Nearly two-thirds of participants reported having at least one adverse childhood experience.

Compared to participants with no adverse childhood experiences, those who reported zero to three ACEs were almost two times more likely to be at risk for opioid misuse. Participants who reported four or more ACEs had almost three times greater risk.

78.8% of participants reported having at least one past or current health condition, which Thapa says is a key pathway connecting ACEs and opioid use because having some sort of health condition or injury is typically the first time a student would be exposed to an opioid.

The critical difference in the participants’ risk of opioid misuse was the number of ACEs they had experienced as a kid.

“The likelihood to misuse opioid for students who had four or more ACEs is 13% higher,” said Thapa. “So, if we are looking at two groups with similar health conditions, the group with four or more ACEs is more likely to be at risk for opioid misuse.”

This clear association between childhood trauma and risk of opioid misuse is why the authors argue that ACEs should be assessed as part of opioid abuse screeners to support ongoing prevention efforts.

“These experiences can greatly impact lifelong health, even more so for those who have experienced more adverse experiences as a child,” said author Kennicia Fortson, who conducted the study as a graduate student at the College of Public Health with Thapa.

“The possible impacts of things like racism, neighborhood violence, grief, involvement with the juvenile justice system, and other adverse experiences must also be understood,” she said.More work is needed, said Fortson, to understand this relationship among young adults, with diverse samples.

The study, “Adverse childhood experience, risk of opioid misuse and its pathway among students at a public university,” is available online.

Former graduate student Kennicia Fortson is the second lead author. Other co-authors include Justin Ingels and Kiran Thapa with the University of Georgia College of Public Health and Shanta Dube with Georgia State University.

 

Written by: Lauren Baggett
Contact: Jani Thapa

University of Georgia faculty members have been named Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professors, the university’s highest recognition for excellence in instruction.

“Meigs Professors are an elite group of faculty members at an institution that places a great value on outstanding instruction,” said S. Jack Hu, the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “I congratulate the recipients of this significant honor and thank them for their exemplary dedication to our students.”

Rebecca Matthew

Matthew, OIBR Affiliate and associate professor in the School of Social Work, has a distinguished record of teaching excellence and an abiding commitment to mentoring students. Her pedagogy centers on community-based and experiential learning approaches, which allow students to apply key concepts in the study of social work in real-world settings.

Matthew co-led an experiential interdisciplinary educational collaboration with the Athens Well-Being Project. She supervised a team of 79 master’s-level social work students in the collection of primary, open-access, neighborhood-level data that has supported ongoing efforts to improve community health. She led 34 students in experiential learning activities that supported the Athens Community Partnership for Youth Development. She is also a co-convener and faculty advisor for the student-coordinated Athens Social Justice Symposium, which received the 2016 UGA NAACP Image Award for Advocacy and Social Justice.

Matthew has a courtesy appointment in the department of health promotion and behavior in the College of Public Health and is a faculty fellow in the Center for Social Justice, Human and Civil Rights. She also served as the coordinator of the LACSI-PORTAL Latino Research and Outreach Initiative in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute.

She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Career Development and Success Recognition Award and six-time School of Social Work MSW Teacher of the Year.

Sarah Shannon

OIBR Affiliate, Sarah Shannon, associate professor of sociology, provides her students with innovative active learning courses and engages students through a holistic mentoring model. Her commitment to mentoring has played a pivotal role in helping students discover their passions and talents.

Shannon’s teaching excellence is evident in her service-learning course, Inside-Out. This course brings UGA students together with people who are incarcerated at the local jail in a shared learning environment. Her students describe this as the most meaningful academic and social experiences of their college careers.

Shannon also currently serves as undergraduate coordinator in the department of sociology. She has trained and mentored 16 undergraduate students through the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities program. Along with this role, she is also an enthusiastic mentor to graduate students in the department. Shannon is especially devoted to securing funding for research assistants and developing them as academic researchers.

Shannon is the recipient of numerous university awards and honors, including the Russell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award, the Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award, the Service-Learning Fellowship, the Special Collections Library Fellowship and the Lilly Teaching Fellowship.

More information about the Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorships is at http://provost.uga.edu/resources/faculty-resources/professorships/josiah-meigs-distinguished-teaching-professorships/.

Original Story: https://bit.ly/3NOiMYr