Category: Community Health

Raj partners with ClarkLindsey to test culturally diverse seasonings

Jan. 29, 2024 | Ethan Simmons

Research project will culminate in a live culinary workshop for local retirement community

ClarkLindsey’s executive chef, DeAngelo Newson, presents a special Hanukkah dinner for residents: beef brisket with latkes and sufganiyot. In 2025, ClarkLindsey food personnel will test out culturally diverse seasonings as part of a KCH research project.

For many older adults from diverse cultural backgrounds, reluctance to enroll in long-term care facilities may start in the cafeteria. 

Mina Raj, an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, surveyed 140 Asian American family caregivers and found that one of the biggest obstacles for their relatives living in long-term care is the lack of culturally relevant food options. 

An upcoming research project from Raj and her team will put an international range of seasonings to the test at an eager local retirement community.  

Raj will organize a live culinary workshop at ClarkLindsey, a retirement community in Urbana. The workshop is aimed at educating ClarkLindsey’s food personnel how to incorporate culturally diverse seasonings (i.e., herbs or spices) into common dishes. Afterwards, personnel and residents will learn about the seasonings and taste the modified meals for themselves.  

“I realized I need one place that is willing to work with us,” Raj said. “If you can build evidence in one place and show something works, you can have that data to start convincing others a model like this could work.”  

The hope, Raj said, is the workshop will provide some proof of concept for other long-term care facilities that are trying to enroll a more diverse clientele, while potentially reducing food waste and promoting cultural inclusivity.  

The study is funded by a two-year grant from the McCormick Science Institute, which sponsors research on the health effects of culinary herbs and spices. The population at ClarkLindsey, with its longstanding research connections with the College of Applied Health Sciences and Illinois at large, is ready and willing to participate. 

“As people grow older, often the dining experience is the highlight of their day, having good food with good community and good conversation,” said Laura Edwards, vice president of strategy & innovation at the nonprofit retirement home. “I’m really excited to see where this goes.”

A logical connection 

When she began exploring the topic with registered dietitians and food service directors in long-term care facilities in a project funded by the Center on Health, Aging, and Disability, Raj met some resistance to the idea of incorporating a more diverse set of ingredients into LTC menus. 

Professionals she surveyed worried that lack of cultural knowledge among their food personnel and the cost of ingredients would pose significant barriers to a culinary revamp, especially if their resident populations were majority White and most familiar with American/Western cuisine. 

However, the consequences of excluding dietary desires of culturally diverse older adults could be wide ranging, Raj posits. Many populations of these cultures will need significant institutional care in the coming decades, and refusal to eat the food at long-term care facilities could lead to negative health outcomes, including frailty. This can often place substantial additional demands on their family members to prepare and deliver meals.

A leading candidate for collaboration emerged just across town. The College of AHS’ Wendy Bartlo, assistant director of strategic initiatives and research relations, serves on ClarkLindsey’s board. She connected Raj with Edwards, who organizes research opportunities at the nonprofit retirement home. 

As people grow older, often the dining experience is the highlight of their day, having good food with good community and good conversation. I’m really excited to see where this goes.”

Laura Edwards

Vice president of strategy & innovation at ClarkLindsey. 

Edwards, an AHS alumna who obtained her B.S. in Community Health in 2012, began working at ClarkLindsey as an intern just before graduating. She’s seen the frequent research collaborations with College of AHS and Illinois led by an astute, participatory resident population, and this project fit the bill perfectly. 

“Whenever we hear about interesting research that could benefit the lives of older adults, we are very interested to know more, because it’s our mission to ensure older adults can live their best lives,” Edwards said.  

According to recent data, most ClarkLindsey residents are connected to the university in some way. In 2018, 42 percent of them were Illinois alumni and 57 percent were current faculty or emeriti. More than a quarter of the near-300 residents had reportedly participated in Illinois research. 

“If there’s an opportunity to participate in research, our residents are very eager to get involved,” Edwards said. “Why these projects are so successful is these [professors] feel like they’re defending their dissertation again, because they’re getting questions right and left.”

ClarkLindsey’s executive chef, DeAngelo Newson, already experiments with cross-cultural dishes with his staff. Residents usually choose between a traditional “option A” for dinner or a more adventurous “option B”— recent examples include Indian cuisine, oxtail, and Hanukkah-themed latkes and sufganiyot. 

“I anticipate it being a popular and exciting experience for our residents and for our staff as well,” Edwards said. 

The plan

This year, Raj and her team, including her doctoral student Ammarah Mashhood and undergraduates Sabeen Sadruddin and Harshita Varanasi, will conduct another nationwide survey of dietitians and food service personnel working in long-term care to understand their awareness of culturally diverse seasonings and ability to prepare meals with those ingredients in mind. 

In 2025, planning for the workshop will commence. 

In the current agenda, ClarkLindsey food personnel will be treated to an educational session on the use and history of the seasonings on day one of the workshop delivered by chefs from the McCormick Science Institute. Then, they’ll witness two demonstrations from South Asian and Hispanic/Latin American dietitians on culturally tailored meals that are both diabetes-friendly and heart-healthy, followed by taste panels and acceptability surveys.

(Luis Gutierrez-Munoz, a nutritional sciences master’s student, will help develop these specialized recipes.) 

The meals will include common vegetables and culinary staples such as green beans, potatoes and rice, prepared and seasoned in different ways, Raj said. She’s particularly excited to see how personnel and residents respond to the educational part of the exercise, and whether their cultural awareness shifts after the workshop. 

“We want to emphasize the “why” in this workshop. Most trainings on diverse cultures focus on the “what,” but when it comes to food every culture has a rich history of culinary traditions and norms. Teaching about, and ultimately incorporating culturally diverse seasonings, could present a meaningful, and low-cost, approach to raising awareness among staff and sense of belonging for our diverse older adults,” Raj said.

Editor’s note:

To reach Mina Raj, email mraj@illinois.edu.
 

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HK professors work with Chicago Lighthouse on a home-based exercise program for low-vision and blind adults

Dec. 18, 2023 | Bruce Adams

Kinesiology faculty partner with Chicago’s service organization for the blind

How can accessible, home-based exercise programs be created for low-vision and blind adults? A team from the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the College of Applied Health Sciences will begin collaboration with the Chicago Lighthouse in the spring of 2024 to design one such training plan.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Campus Research Board has provided $25,000 in funding for the Exercise for Visual Impairments and Aging: Co-Designing a Home-Based Exercise Program for Blind and Visually Impaired Individuals (EXVIA) Project for two years. 

“The purpose of this research is to collaboratively design a feasible home-based exercise program for individuals with low vision and blindness,” said KCH Assistant Professor Soyoung Choi, the project’s principal investigator.

EXVIA content will be developed in the spring and summer of 2024, followed by feasibility testing in the fall. Choi, an accessibility researcher and nurse, is joined on the project by her KCH faculty colleagues, assistant professors Susan Aguiñaga and Emerson Sebastião.

The EXVIA team also includes Dr. Schweta Chaudhary, an ophthalmologist and surgical consultant at Hines VA Hospital in Hines, Ill. 

The Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, founded in 1906, serves the blind, visually impaired, and Veteran communities with vision rehabilitation services, education, employment opportunities, and assistive technology and will play a key role in EXVIA. Choi noted that Chicago Lighthouse will “support participant recruitment and data collection. Through regular meetings, we will incorporate their expert opinions into developing exercise sessions tailored for individuals with low vision and blindness. We will set up a screen, speakers, and a video camera at The Chicago Lighthouse, serving as the primary data collection site, to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the home-based exercise program.”

Aiming to recruit three low-vision adults and three blind adults to participate, the EXVIA team will distribute information to the Chicago Lighthouse community and ultimately select seven volunteer participants “considering potential dropouts” and ensuring “a balanced representation across variables such as the onset of visual impairment (acquired vs. congenital), gender (male vs. female), and age brackets (20s-30s, 40s-50s),” Choi said.

The workouts will be identified and then designed via group discussion by the team to create eight home-based exercise sessions. Choi described a “focus on key training areas: muscle strength, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, balance, and bone density and joint health. Each session will be meticulously designed in accordance with the latest evidence-based advancements in exercise science, exercise physiology and adapted physical education, ensuring their effectiveness and acceptability for individuals with low vision and blindness. Upon completing the synthesis of synopses for the regimen, we will then create exercise videos, verbal instructions, and video descriptions.” 

The team will utilize immersive computing and audiovisual resources, including a high-powered PC workstation, virtual video production, and audio recording equipment available at the SCIM Lab at Illinois’ Library Scholarly Commons to create the final products.

Editor’s note:

To reach Soyoung Choi, email soyoungchoi@illinois.edu.
 

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KCH, IHSI researchers take lead on Illinois Youth Tobacco Survey

Nov. 06, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Illinois last funded its own youth tobacco survey in 2015

Eight years have passed since comprehensive data was collected on the tobacco use and smoking habits of Illinois teenagers. But scientific minds are back on the issue once again, with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers at the helm. 

Two Kinesiology and Community Health faculty are set to receive $650,000 to administer and report the Centers for Disease Control’s Illinois Youth Tobacco Survey this academic year, conducting essential research on tobacco use among thousands of Illinois middle and high schoolers. 

In partnership with the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute on campus, KCH Assistant Professor Sarah Geiger will lead the survey as principal investigator, along with co-investigator Professor Pedro Hallal, director of the Master of Public Health program at the College of Applied Health Sciences. 

“It’s been too long, in our opinion, without telling what’s going on in Illinois with youth smoking, vaping, hookah, all of those things related to tobacco,” Geiger said. “Think about how much has changed in 10 years in terms of youth culture and vaping, and everything tobacco related.”

The CDC runs the National Youth Tobacco Survey on an annual basis, surveying teenagers across the United States on their smoking and tobacco habits. State health departments can conduct their own versions of the survey if funding is available. 

Illinois last funded its own youth tobacco survey in 2015, contracting out-of-state to do so, Geiger said. For the first time, the University of Illinois will lead the project, with funding from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

In spring 2024, the research team plans to send out digital surveys to teenagers in 50 middle schools and 75 high schools, randomly selected within Illinois. Their ideal target: 7,500 respondents. 

Since 2014, e-cigarettes have been the most commonly used tobacco product among young people, according to the CDC. In 2022, more than 4 in 100 middle schoolers and about 1 in 6 high schoolers reported current use of a tobacco product. 

The Illinois survey is being constructed with core items from the national form, along with more state-specific inquiries. The previous Illinois Youth Tobacco Survey found children with asthma had higher rates of tobacco use than those without; this iteration of the survey will contain an “asthma module” to gather more in-depth data. 

“The landscape for youth tobacco use has changed. I’m glad we’re implementing questions specifically related to vaping and asthma,” said Max Wallace, program coordinator for IHSI who will serve as the project’s field coordinator. “Asthma is so prevalent among youth in the United States, so I think it’s really important we’re incorporating these questions.”

The hope among investigators is a successful youth tobacco survey will lead to a more regular occurrence in Illinois, with the U. of I. staying in the driver’s seat. 

“For us, it’s like a capacity building exercise as well,” Hallal said. “We’ll be able to gain expertise and become the primary option for them to conduct this survey.”

A sizable portion of the project’s budget is set aside for graduate students to assist with the data collection and analysis. More opportunities will come indirectly, Hallal said, from subsequent research analyses of the completed survey data.  

“This will generate a lot of fantastic data,” Geiger said. “This is a big ask to put this all together. Having the funding helps, but that’s not the full picture. You have to have the expertise; you have to have the will from different units to be able to put this all together.

“I’m proud of U of I for having the people within the organization who had the wherewithal to go. ‘Let’s figure this out and let’s make it happen to at least to be considered for this opportunity.’”

Editor’s note:

To reach Sarah Geiger, email smurphy7@illinois.edu
 

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AHS researchers: Give ADRD caregivers more information in clinical trials

Oct. 16, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Mina Raj’s research focuses on the ways family caregivers can be better integrated into healthcare settings and teams (Photo provided)

For clinical trials centered on individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, what types of information are family caregivers given during the research process? A research team nested in the College of Applied Health Sciences recently evaluated that question by analyzing ADRD trials from the past 30 years. 

What they found in their report, published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, was that less than half of the clinical trials the researchers sampled specified the caregivers’ responsibilities. 

Given that caregivers are often surrogate decision-makers for participants and are responsible for multiple tasks throughout a clinical trial, the finding stuck out.

“The people who are finding these trials are often caregivers, they’re probably deciding whether to enroll their relatives and whether they have the bandwidth to support their relative through that intensive process,” said co-author Mina Raj, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. “And yet less than half of the time they’re given information about what they’re supposed to do.” 

For this report, funded by the Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Illinois, Raj collaborated with Raksha Mudar, professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science at Illinois, and Dr. Vania Leung, a primary care physician in UI Health, which is part of the University of Illinois Chicago, and an assistant professor of Clinical Medicine at UIC. 

Two Community Health students took a prominent role in the report: Armando Miranda, who graduated with his master’s degree in the spring, and Eve Rubovits, currently a senior in the program. 

Raj’s research focuses on the ways family caregivers can be better integrated into healthcare settings and teams. The report’s topic arose from a separate study Raj conducted a couple of years ago, which centered on Asian American family caregivers, she said. The study combined qualitative interviews and surveys to learn about the caregivers’ challenges navigating the healthcare system. 

What consistently came up, Raj said, were the difficulties of handling the intensity and demands of clinical trials. 

“Dementia is underdiagnosed and underreported due to diagnostics that are not culturally relevant along with stigma within these communities,” she said. “Caregivers in our study experienced a lot of problems getting their relatives enrolled in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s and dementia-related diseases.” 

For example, a lot of trials expect that participants are fluent in English, which would imperil results from screening measures such as word recall tests. Caregivers have additional responsibilities in these situations, including translation, and they are often overwhelmed and underinformed about their responsibilities.

“This led to the question, what are study teams actually telling participants and caregivers about their responsibilities?” 

To expand on that question, the team dug deep into ADRD clinical trials, sampling from more than 250 trials completed between 1990 and 2021. 

The two students, Rubovits and Miranda, spearheaded the data analysis, qualitatively coding information from relevant study information pages on clinicaltrials.gov, a website commonly used to identify clinical trials. The pair also reviewed the trials to evaluate how many trials included information on caregivers’ responsibilities, and what types of responsibilities were reported. 

Rubovits joined Raj’s lab after her freshman year through the Students Pursuing Applications, Research and Knowledge program, also known as SPARK, which connects AHS undergrads to research opportunities. Six months of poring through clinical trial data was the most involved Rubovits felt in any academic study. 

“I definitely learned a lot more technical and hard-research skills,” she said. “Having a mentor like Dr. Raj, and working with grad students like Armando has been so helpful, and has honestly shaped my career goals toward wanting to do research.” 

Their findings that less than half of the analyzed trials contained instructions for caregivers gave way for a proposal: Clinical trials for ADRD should consistently provide caregivers information about their responsibilities.  

“At a baseline, we need to tell our caregivers things like how many times per week they’re going to be transporting their relative back and forth to the study site. We need to tell them the risks and benefits to participating,” Raj said. “Often [instructions] are not clear or accessible, for example through different languages. In other cases, no information is provided at all.” 

Researchers are already approaching new ground based on the study’s finding: The broader goal was to understand how to include racial and ethnic minority adults in clinical trials by engaging their family caregivers, Raj said. She has surveyed more than 100 Asian American, Hispanic and Latino caregivers for what information they’d seek in clinical trials for ADRD patients. 

“We wanted a baseline understanding of how caregivers are involved right now—this was the first step,” Raj said. “We haven’t really asked caregivers what types of information they want to see in those information pages to prepare them for caregiving responsibilities, and that’s what we’re doing right now.” 

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Ian Rice gets NIDILRR funding for Power of Play project

Sept. 18, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The project aim is to remove barriers to participation in recreational, exercise, and adaptive sports often encountered by persons with disabilities

Ian Rice

Ian Rice, a KCH teaching associate professor, received a grant of approximately $4.5 million from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research for his called “Power of Play.”

Rice is the principal investigator and project director for Power of Play, which serves to expand access to and promote use of regular, consistent physical activity, sports participation and active recreation for persons with disabilities through research and development of novel technologies, advanced training and educational techniques, and dissemination strategies.

The mechanism is a  Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERC) Program, Rice said. The long-term strategy of this project is to remove barriers to participation in recreational, exercise, and adaptive sports often encountered by persons with disabilities, with particular emphasis on equity of access among underserved communities.

Objectives target the domains of community living and participation and health and function of persons with disabilities through research and development of novel recreational technologies, health related products and equipment, and advanced training and educational techniques.

According to Rice, Power of Play will specifically address inclusivity, incorporating proven and emerging technologies and strategies, and making adaptive sports and recreation equipment safe, available, affordable, and reliable to children, adolescents and underserved people.

Rice said the project will involve multidisciplinary collaborations among researchers at University of Pittsburgh and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as well as health system and community partners serving people with disabilities. 

Among the research projects Rice and the group plan to accomplish are examining the impact and usability of an air-powered wheelchair (called PneuChair) capable of navigating outdoor environments previously hazardous and/or inaccessible to power mobility users. They also plan to develop and examine safe limits of use for off-road wheelchairs and hand cycles through using safe clinical limits of use tools (CLOUT) methodology and examine functionality usability and enjoyment of an inclusive, home-based smart connected arm cycle for improved overall function and quality of life in wheelchair users.  

The funding spans five years, Rice said.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Laura Rice gets grant to extend TechSAge work

Oct. 16, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

The research of TechSAge is pressing forward after Rice received a $4.6 million grant

Laura Rice

A “smart” bathroom optimized for safety and mobility disabilities. A tai chi telewellness program. Fall detection devices for wheelchair users. 

All are projects associated with the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technologies to Support Aging Among People with Long-Term Disabilities, also known as “TechSAge.”

The research of TechSAge is pressing forward after Kinesiology and Community Health Associate Professor Laura Rice received a $4.6 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to support another five years of work. 

“We want to make sure people with disabilities are able to live life to their fullest,” Rice said. “We want to make sure as people with disabilities get older, they continue to enjoy the things that they like to do.”

The goal of TechSAge is to meet the needs of people aging with long-term disabilities where they live, work, and play by conducting advanced engineering research and developing innovative technologies.

Recent surveys suggest the needs are pressing: According to current estimates, about 42.5 million Americans report living with a disability, making up roughly 13 percent of the population. That percentage jumps among older adults ages 75 or older, of whom 46 percent report having a disability. 

TechSAge started at Georgia Tech 11 years ago, with then-GT faculty Jon Sanford directing the project with co-directors Wendy Rogers and Tracy Mitzner. Rogers, now a professor in KCH and director of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home research center, moved to the University of Illinois in 2017, and the project’s presence has continued to grow on the Urbana-Champaign campus while the cross-country partnership continued. 

Rogers, Sanford—who is now at Georgia State University—and Mitzner, who is now at Person in Design, will continue as key members of the Leadership Team, along with longtime Project Coordinator, Elena Remillard, now site PI at Georgia Tech. The TechSAge team will continue to engage their vast network of industry partners and community-based stakeholders.  The projects also engage students at all levels, including undergraduates, graduates, and postdocs.

In TechSAge’s third iteration, Rice is the principal investigator, with Rogers continuing as a co-investigator. The Illinois interdisciplinary collaborators include Harshal Mahajan, assistant director of research at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home; Ian Rice, a teaching associate professor in KCH; Katie Driggs-Campbell, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Grainger College of Engineering; Girish Krishnan, an associate professor in Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering in the Grainger College of Engineering; and Deana McDonagh, a professor of Graphic Design in the School of Art + Design.  

“I definitely appreciate that they see something in me, and that I can be a part of leading the next several years of this center,” Rice said. “We have a very collaborative process.” 

Rice arrived in year six of the project, after her colleagues spent five years “laying the foundation” of the Center.  One of the initial projects, led by Illinois Professor Wendy Rogers, involves performing a needs assessment to understand the needs of adults aging with long-term disabilities.  These findings have helped to provide design guidance for the rest of the projects associated with the Center. 

In the last five years, the team has focused on ramping up their interventions and technology solutions to assist the aging of people with long-term disabilities. Jon Sanford and Georgia Tech researcher Brian Jones have spearheaded the “SmartBathroom” at the university’s Aware Home to meet the needs of people with mobility disabilities, for example. 

Much of the lab-based research at Illinois has taken place at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, the research center dedicated to technological innovations in the home environment. One on-site project led by Katie Driggs-Campbell is focused on developing an assistive robot to help older adults who are blind or low-vision navigate through their space.  Another robotics project co-led by Girish Krishnan and Ian Rice will develop a robot shower to enable safe and independent bathing for older wheelchair users. The LIFE Home will be used for preliminary testing in both robot projects.

“Research can be a hard process, we do have to go slow—especially with technology, we need to make sure that we’re developing things properly so that it will be useful and usable to individuals who are beneficiaries of it,” Rice said. Projects emphasize user-centered design and the inclusion of people aging with disabilities in all stages of the R&D process.

That said, some projects are nearing their release to the public, Rice said. TechSAge researchers at Person in Design and Georgia Tech, Tracy Mitzner and Elena Remillard, have adapted a tai chi intervention to support the needs of adults aging with long-term disabilities, using a telewellness protocol to deliver a physical activity and social engagement opportunity in a safe and supportive manner. 

“In these next five years, we have the ability to take these projects to the next level,” Rice said. 

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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Student Spotlight: Anjali Patel forging her path

May 31, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Like the millions of other high school seniors who applied for college during the COVID-19 pandemic, Anjali Patel made her choice of campus sight unseen.

Hailing from Memphis, Tenn., she hadn’t set foot near the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign when she was accepted to the College of Applied Health Sciences in spring 2020.

“I guess I got here by luck,” said Patel, now a rising senior in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences. “I didn’t have a particular reason other than I just loved what this major was.”

Patel often credits good fortune for guiding her college experience, from deciding to go to Illinois to landing in the research lab of Kinesiology and Community Health Associate Professor Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo.

But chance alone can’t explain the continued academic rise of this first-generation AHS student, who’s heading for a prestigious research opportunity this summer.

As she progresses toward her goal of medical school, Patel is satisfied with her choice of major.

“You do learn the science as part of your prerequisites for whatever path you want to follow,” she said. “But then also you get to learn about health disparities and organizations of health care—there’s just so much more that you learn with this major that makes it different from all the others.”

Patel’s next stop is a 2023 Summer Undergraduate Psychology Experience in Research fellowship. Patel and a cohort of 24 other American and Canadian undergrads from underrepresented backgrounds were selected from a competitive field of applicants to spend nine weeks in laboratory settings for psychological science.

Patel will continue a critical study documenting the experiences of women living with postpartum pain and depression, work she began in Lara-Cinisomo’s Laboratory for Emotion and Stress Assessment.

The I-Health major found the lab in the second semester of her freshman year. “She hit the ground running,” Lara-Cinisomo said, adding that Patel helped grad students in the lab prepare materials for new studies.

“It was evident that Anjali was eager to learn more about research,” Lara-Cinisomo said.

Patel has already conducted participant interviews with intense research studies, such as a broad look at how COVID-19 affected Latina and Mexican American mothers in the U.S. With the subjects at hand, many interviews become emotionally difficult.

“There’s a learning curve in trying to understand how to respond to someone who’s sensitive to what they’re talking about while trying to complete your job,” Patel said.

But her role is also an exercise in empathy, discussing issues such as pregnancy and medical complications in an academic setting.

“It was just very eye-opening to listen to all those experiences, and even now with my current interviews, it’s interesting to learn so much about mothers’ experiences,” she said.

Lara-Cinisomo will continue to be Patel’s mentor through the summer fellowship.

“She takes every role seriously and is diligent,” Lara-Cinisomo said. “The summer research experience will build on Anjali’s passion for research. I am confident Anjali will excel.”

In addition to her studies on the pre-med track, Patel will serve as president of the student organization Mentors in Medicine next year, which pairs upperclassmen and underclassmen interested in healthcare careers.

“As a freshman, I didn’t know what I needed to do. Now, I feel like as a junior I have so much to tell people to help them,” Patel said.

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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How Veterans’ cannabis use can impact their care

May 23, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

While cannabis use is increasing for military Veterans, most aren’t getting it from medical sources

Photo by caption

By ETHAN SIMMONS

Twenty-one states have legalized recreational cannabis, and 88 percent of American adults are in favor of legalizing the use of marijuana for medical and recreational use, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Military Veterans aren’t an exception from this rising tide.

While the percentage of Veterans reporting past-year marijuana use has increased in the last decade, few of them obtain it from medical sources, a new study shows.

An analysis from Department of Kinesiology and Community Health Assistant Professor Rachel Hoopsick and co-author R. Andrew Yockey, assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth School of Public Health, dove into national trends in marijuana use among U.S. Veterans from 2013 to 2019.

The researchers pulled data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which surveyed 16,350 veterans ages 18 and older on their experience with various substances.

Hoopsick’s and Yockey’s analysis revealed a sharp increase in marijuana use among Veterans in recent years. More than one in eight Veterans surveyed (12.9 percent) reported past-year marijuana use in 2019, up from 8.24 percent in 2013.

“Where it gets interesting is we did not see a similar increase in self-reported medical marijuana use among vets,” said Hoopsick, whose research focuses on substance use and mental health for people in high-stress occupations. “This is telling us that although marijuana use is increasing in Vets, it’s not medical marijuana, it’s recreational marijuana.”

In the U.S., 38 states have authorized the sale of medical marijuana, and 21 of them regulate cannabis for recreational use as well. But the drug remains federally illegal, classified as Schedule I by the Drug Enforcement Administration “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Therefore, Veterans Health Administration providers cannot prescribe or recommend patients marijuana, though they may discuss the drug in a general sense.

Many Veterans clearly use marijuana, often seeking it out for therapeutic purposes, Hoopsick said. Veterans show higher instances of physical and mental health conditions than the general population.

This disconnect presents two issues, Hoopsick said: VA health care providers might be missing a critical piece of health information during consultations with Veteran patients. And with less frequent medical prescriptions, some Veterans could be obtaining cannabis from unregulated sources with added safety risks.

“Veterans should discuss with their care providers how the addition of cannabinoids or any other medication to their routine may interact with or impact other medications or treatments they are receiving,” an official from the Veterans Health Administration wrote in an email.

Veterans will not be denied their VA benefits for using marijuana.

“I think that that is a fear among some Veterans that if they divulge that information that they’ll lose their benefits, but that’s not the case at all,” Hoopsick said.

“It’s important for their health care providers to have a full understanding of all the substances that they might be using and how that might affect their health and treatment plan.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Rachel Hoopsick, email hoopsick@illinois.edu.
 

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Geiger to assess effects of some chemicals on children’s sleep

Feb. 14, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in many common household items, and our blood

PFAS are found in many common household items and found in our blood.

Multiple studies have shown that children who regularly get an adequate amount of sleep have improved attention, behavior, learning, memory, and overall mental and physical health. Not getting enough sleep can lead to high blood pressure, obesity and depression. An Illinois researcher wants to help mitigate those sleep issues. 

Kinesiology and Community Health assistant professor Sarah Geiger is planning to assess how the exposure to certain chemicals while in the womb affects child sleep later in life and can lead to poorer health outcomes. Geiger’s study is funded by an R03 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) component dedicated to environmental health research. In the grant application, Geiger writes that “the potential for prenatal exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) to adversely impact children’s health is a growing public health issue.” As Geiger explains, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are EDCs found in many common household items and found in our blood.

“They’re so pervasive in terms of products,” said Geiger, who investigates environmental pollutants and chronic disease risk factors, including sleep problems, among children. “Studies have shown them to be found in foods (and) they’re notorious for these non-stick surfaces, but that’s really just one of so many types of things they’re in. Plastic water bottles, plastic fast food containers. They’re even in biomedical devices and things like IV bags and makeup, all sorts of cosmetics, nail polish.”

Geiger said her study is looking at the pregnant mom’s concentrations of those chemicals in her blood, and then looking at outcomes in children.

“We’re measuring her levels as a proxy of what they’re being exposed to,” Geiger said. “The idea is that developmental exposure in the womb to those chemicals that their mother has been exposed to is somehow altering their development and manifesting later as sleep problems. What we’re really interested in is looking at the association between the two. Are moms with higher levels of these chemicals in their blood more likely to have children who have poorer sleep quality? And if so, then we can think about maybe what is the mechanism that is causing that to happen?”

Geiger added that the study is not only looking at how chemical exposure in the womb affects child sleep later on, but also how stress and depression and other factors during pregnancy can affect child’s sleep later on. The study is important, Geiger said, because sleep, or the lack of it, is a predictor for health. Lack of sleep for a child can lead them to be unfocused and unproductive. And a lack of sleep in childhood is predictive of sleep issues in adulthood, she said, adding that sleep problems in adulthood cost the U.S. billions of in health care.

Another reason this research is important is how long certain PFAS can stay in a person’s body.

“They are sometimes called forever chemicals; they have an extremely long half-life compared to other types of endocrine-disrupting chemicals,” Geiger said. “The half-life might be like five years. Let’s say you have a certain level of this one chemical in your blood, after five years, half of it would have been metabolized or excreted from your body. To give you a comparison, like BPA (bisphenol A), another common endocrine-disrupting chemical, the half life is more like five hours.”

As important as the research is, Geiger is realistic that studies like hers and others are not likely to force companies to limit their use of PFAS.

“These are extremely powerful market forces … I would like to think that all of the research combined on sleep and other things may apply some pressure, but—and I do think that the end goal is to try to remove or limit these types of chemicals if they are harmful—but that’s much easier said than done. It’s a pretty difficult task. 

Editor’s note:

To reach Sarah Geiger, email smurphy7@illinois.edu.
 

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Stretching their Reach: Robotic support for older individuals

Jan. 09, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The goal is to create a scalable, affordable, flexible Stretch Cognitive and Physical Assistant that can improve the quality of life for older adults with a range of cognitive and physical impairments

University of Illinois researcher Dr. Wendy Rogers is stretching her work with Stretch the Robot.

The Kinesiology and Community Health professor has received a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health), for approximately $2.5 million.

The research will be conducted between December 2022 and November 2024 and builds on a Phase I grant that Rogers and Dr. Aaron Edsinger, CEO of Hello Robot, received last year. Other Illinois collaborators on the new grant include Speech and Hearing Science Associate Professor Raksha Mudar and Harshal Mahajan, Assistant Director of Research for the McKechnie Family LIFE Home. Also part of the new team are ClarkLindsey, an independent, senior living community in Urbana, Ill.; Dr. Vy Nguyen, an occupational therapist at Hello Robot; and Dr. Charlie Kemp, director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech and CTO of Hello Robot.

Phase I explored the use of Stretch, a research robot designed by Kemp & Edsinger, to support everyday activities through use of a lightweight telescoping arm mounted on a mobile base. That research identified home tasks for which support is needed; developed tools to enable Stretch to effectively perform these tasks; and designed an easy-to-use interface that older adults can use to control Stretch to carry out their desired tasks.

The Phase II grant will advance the capabilities of Stretch, in partnership with ClarkLindsey, focusing on physical and cognitive tasks. The aim is to determine how assistive robots can support the needs of older adults with cognitive impairment in addition to those with mobility impairment. The researchers plan to refine the remote control interface to be used by caregivers, develop autonomous activities for Stretch, and explore Stretch’s utility in a variety of home environments, including common rooms with multiple people. 

The goal is to create a scalable, affordable, flexible Stretch Cognitive and Physical Assistant that can improve the quality of life for older adults with a range of cognitive and physical impairments, the researchers say.

In addition to ClarkLindsey, research and testing for this grant will be conducted at the McKechnie Family LIFE Home on the University of Illinois campus.
 

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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