Faculty Advisor: Dr. Ezer Kang
…to create, implement, and disseminate
behavioral research that broadens our understanding of illness and well-being
in unjustly served communities.
Lab Members: Bethany Dayton
(Lab Coordinator), Angela Banks, Nancy Nealious, Rachael Post, Austin Schrag,
Lauren Widman, Anta Yu
In 2012-13, we will partner with several
community-based organizations to develop, support, and evaluate pilot interventions.
Behavioral Health Intervention for Adults Living with HIV and Poor
Adherence to HAART Medication
Lawndale Christian Community Health Center (LCCHC)
HIV Mental Health
Program
Project Team: Ron Chacko, Sonji Miller, Bethany Dayton, Angela Banks
Medical treatment adherence is
commonly impeded by current and past psychiatric disorders and stressors of
daily living largely related to urban poverty. We are implementing and
evaluating an 8-month pilot HIV behavioral health intervention program that
provides short-term joint individual psychotherapy and supportive case management
to patients who present with poor adherence to ART medication and attendance at
medical appointments at LCCHC.
Integrated Learning Clinic
for Court-Involved Adolescents
Lawndale Christian Legal Center (LCLC)
Project Team: Cliff Nellis, Jeanette Lee, Jana Pressley, Elisha
Eveleigh
Increased academic skills and
achievement among court-involved youth provide alternatives to delinquent
behavior. However, endemic in many economically disadvantaged neighborhoods,
under-resourced schools coupled with stressors related to urban poverty
contribute to low academic performance, and often perpetuate a sense of
“learned hopelessness,” especially among court-involved youth. We are piloting
and evaluating a program that provides curriculum-based assessments for
school-aged youth receiving legal services at LCLC that will be linked to
individual tutoring interventions.
Lay-Provider Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Intervention for Adults
Living with HIV/AIDS and Major Depression
Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA), Delhi, India
Project Team: Saira Paulose, Savita Duomai, Ben Pyykkonen, Monica Schindler
In resource constrained settings where mental health professionals
are not readily accessible, there is an emergent need to train lay-providers to
deliver brief interventions adapted from evidence-based practices. The process
of developing, adapting, implementing, and evaluating this proposed
intervention for Major Depression at Shalom AIDS Project in Delhi, will bear
valuable lessons for tailoring lay-provider interventions for other communities
served by EHA – those who contend with concurrent social, economic, medical,
and mental health challenges.
With the completion of several projects,
students and research collaborators will prepare several manuscripts:
- Influences of HIV-stigma and transmission knowledge on Buddhist and Protestant involvement in care and prevention in Chinese immigrant communities (with Anta Yu)
- Dialectic narratives of living
with perinatal HIV and medications: It's not that simple (with Angela
Banks)
- What's supportive about social support? A mediation model for social support and quality of life for mothers living with HIV in New York City