BBHNews NEWS for Alumni of the Department of Biobehavioral Health COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Summer 2013
Biobehavioral Health Building: Settled In
Faculty and staff members began to move into the new Biobehavioral Health Building in November 2012. Here are some of their impressions thus far. “The building has many available meeting spaces that are inviting and warm, which provide a great setting for working
with colleagues and students. With regard to teaching, the new lecture hall is simply an amazing place to hold class. The facilities are spectacular and the acoustics are fabulous. This building has encouraged me to think about space in a new way. Rather than individuals holing up in their offices and separate lab spaces, there is a lot of available community space that can be shared, which saves on resources and encourages collaboration.” Laura Klein, associate professor
“I loved teaching BBH 101 practicum session in the new BBH building. The students have lots of space to bring their laptops to class. The atrium includes bistro tables for meeting one-on-one with students. It is a beautiful space.” Cindy McCrea, graduate student
“In addition to the aesthetics of the space, it is nice to know that I can accomplish most aspects of my research under one roof. I have access to a fabulous research kitchen, with state-of-the-art cooking and food preparation surfaces, and a restaurant-grade freezer and refrigerator. There are also several interview rooms that I can use to interview study participants, including rooms suited for observations. I couldn’t be more happy with the building.”
Lori A. Francis, associate professor
bbh.hhd.psu.edu The Department Biobehavioral Health • 219 Biobehavioral Health Building • University Park, PA 16802 • 814-863-7256
Robert Turrisi receives award from MADD and Society for Prevention Research Robert Turrisi, professor, has received the Ralph Hingson Researcher of the Year Award from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for his high school-level parenting intervention that has become the centerpiece of MADD’s national-level prevention effort, known as the “Power of Parents.” Turrisi—who is also a faculty associate in the Penn State Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development and the Children, Youth, and Families Consortium—designed the intervention based on his over 20 years of research focusing on substance abuse and parent-adolescent relationships. Turrisi also received the 2012 Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research. The award is given to an individual or team of individuals for producing a significant body of research that applies scientific methods to test one
or more preventive interventions or policies. Turrisi will be presented with the award on May 31, at the society’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. In addition to examining alcohol use and abuse among young people, Turrisi also conducts skin cancer prevention research that aims to increase parents’ knowledge of the dangers of the sun and of tanning salons, and asks parents to communicate this knowledge to their children. He also investigates college students’ knowledge of and abuse of steroids and other performance enhancers. Turrisi has authored hundreds of articles and co-authored several books on topics that range from statistical analysis to the role of parenting in preventing risky behavior in children. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rhode Island University in 1983 and a Ph.D. degree in social psychology from the University at Albany—the State University of New York in 1988. He has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 2004.
Koch receives President’s Award for Engagement With Students Patricia Barthalow Koch, professor, has received the 2012 President’s Award for Engagement With Students. The award is given to a faculty member who goes beyond his or her responsibilities to engage and encourage students in learning. The honorees have made themselves available to interact with students outside class, link students to opportunities, and help them build their confidence as learners and potential contributors to society. Koch’s Penn State career began as an instructor in 1976, while she worked to attain her doctorate. After becoming a faculty member in 1983, she developed Introduction to Health and Sexuality, a general education course that often attracts long lists of students waiting to enroll.
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“Although the course is very popular, it also deals regularly with sensitive material that deeply impacts the students’ personal lives,” her nominators said. “It is testament to Dr. Koch’s expert and engaging handling of this topic that every semester students feel comfortable enough with her to come to her seeking a nonjudgmental ear on issues such as health and relationships, unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual identity or orientation, or sexual assault.” For almost 30 years, Koch has worked to train students as campus peer sexual health educators in conjunction with University Health Services or within academic units. She also incorporates peer facilitators in her own large classes so students can meet in smaller groups. “Dr. Koch’s goal in each of her classes is to motivate and provide opportunities for her students to apply what they have learned and develop in contexts outside the classroom,” her nominators said.
Comparing yourself to others can have health impacts Comparing yourself to others with the same health problem can influence your physical and emotional health, according to researchers who conducted a qualitative synthesis of more than 30 studies focusing on the relationship between social comparisons and health.
“Right now, we know that it can go either way,” she said. “Someone’s doing better than you are? That can be either inspirational or depressing. Someone’s doing worse? That can give you some relief, or it can get you thinking about your own situation getting worse in the future. The problem is that although we don’t quite understand how social comparisons work, they are frequently used in health interventions for individuals with chronic illness.”
“If you’ve ever looked at another person and thought, ‘Well, at least I’m doing better than he is,’ or ‘Wow, I wish I could be doing as well as she is,’ you’re not alone,” said Josh Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine. “This phenomenon—first proposed in the 1950s—is common in daily life. When we’re unsure of how we’re doing, we can reduce uncertainty by getting information from others. People with chronic illnesses are particularly likely to compare themselves to others with the same illness.”
For example, health-education materials often include images or descriptions of patients with a particular medical condition to get patients thinking about a hypothetical future. Public service announcements typically use similar tactics, often with limited effect.
In their qualitative synthesis published in a recent issue of Health Psychology Review, Smyth and the researchers at Syracuse University and the University of Iowa found that people who compare “downward” to others who are worse off, are less depressed than people who compare “upward” to people who are better off. Downward comparisons often are associated with immediate positive feelings such as relief and gratitude. But nearly as often, studies show the exact opposite. People who compare upward do better on physical health measures and report feeling hopeful about their ability to improve. Still other studies demonstrate the negative effects of both types of comparisons—downward comparisons can lead to sadness or worry and upward comparisons can lead to dejection. Why the difference? According to Danielle Arigo, graduate student, Syracuse University, this is exactly what researchers need to know before they can help people benefit from making comparisons.
Arigo says that studying the process of social comparison can improve the way we use positive and negative examples of behavior. “We found that previous research points to differences in what people think about while they’re reading, specifically, how similar they are to the person they’re reading about,” she said. “Focusing on similarities between you and people doing well will likely lead to feeling good. Focusing on differences between you and people doing poorly will likely lead to feeling good. “But if you focus on differences between you and someone doing well, or similarities between you and someone doing poorly, you’ll likely feel worse. What people focus on appears to be associated with personality traits, mood, and a variety of other factors that are not yet well understood.” According to Smyth, this research summary identifies specific gaps in the current knowledge about social comparisons, including the factors that determine whether a person focuses on similarities or differences between themselves and others. “In the future, this information may help to improve health communication efforts,” he said. Jerry Suls, professor of social psychology, University of Iowa, was also part of this research. n bbh.hhdev.psu.edu | 3
Roger McCarter gives 2012 Schmitt Russell Research Lecture Roger McCarter, professor, presented the 2012 Schmitt Russell Research Lecture on the topic “The Immortal Lives of Hypotheses on Aging” last fall. The event, sponsored by the College of Health and Human Development, was free and open to the public. The title of McCarter’s talk was influenced by the Rebecca Skloot book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which chronicles how Lacks’ cancer cells were harvested by researchers in the 1950s and have been kept alive for research ever since. “Just like Lacks’ cells, there are theories and hypotheses of aging that are never thoroughly proven or rejected but come back into favor again and again,” said McCarter. “My talk discussed the various theories and hypotheses of aging that have been proposed and provide an assessment, based on my own research results, of their validity.”
McCarter is internationally recognized as a major architect of the present structure of gerontological science. His innovative research on the physiology of aging muscle and on the effects of dietary restriction and exercise on aging processes has provided a major feature of the physical and biological perspectives by which contemporary gerontologists explore the phenomenon of aging. The Schmitt Russell Research Lecture is delivered each year by the most recent recipient of the Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Research Achievement Award, which recognizes the career-long research contributions of a distinguished faculty member whose research has had a profound impact on an identified field of study. The award was established by Leo P. Russell, a 1941 industrial engineering graduate, to honor his late wife, Pauline Schmitt Russell, who received her home economics degree from Penn State in 1948.
Jennifer Graham receives NIH grant to study stress and aging In October 2012, Jennifer Graham, associate professor, along with co-principal investigator Christopher Engeland of the University of Illinois at Chicago, received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for a project titled “Inflammatory Mediators of Stress and Cognitive Aging.” The goals of this project are to improve understanding of the mechanism by which stress and inflammation in early adulthood increase the risk of cognitive decline. The project is being conducted along with co-investigators Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies and director of the Center for Healthy Aging, and Joshua Smyth, professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine. In addition, Richard Lipton and Mindy Katz of Albert Einstein Medical Center are co-investigators.
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Sheila West and Patricia Bartholomew Koch visit Australia Sheila West, associate professor, spent six months of her 2012 sabbatical in Sydney, Australia, where she worked with David Celermajer of the Department of Cardiology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. West and Celermajer collaborated on a study designed to test whether depression increases vascular dysfunction in adults with diabetes. Sheila West
West wasn’t the only BBH’er in Sydney at the time. Professor Pa-
tricia Bartholomew Koch served as an external evaluator for the newly developed master’s program in HIV/STIs and sexual health offered through the University of Sydney Medical School. “We were excited to visit Spring Cooper Robbins ’02, ’06g BBH who lives in Sydney,” said West. Cooper Robbins recently was promoted to senior lecturer at the University of Sydney.
Patricia Bartholomew Koch
John Graham publishes book on the problem of missing data What’s a researcher to do when, halfway through her study, several participants drop out, citing changes to their health status or their availability? Missing data have long plagued those conducting applied research in the social, behavioral, and health sciences, but while good missing-data analysis solutions are available, practical information about implementation of these solutions has been lacking. In a new book, titled “Missing Data: Analysis and Design,” John Graham, professor of biobehavioral health and human development and family studies, offers practical information to researchers who are not statisticians to implement modern missing-data procedures properly in their research, and to reap the benefits, in terms of improved accuracy and statistical power. Graham’s own research focuses on the evaluation of health promotion and disease prevention interventions. He specializes in evaluation research methods, including missing data analysis and design, structural equating modeling, and measurement. “Missing data are a problem for three reasons,” said Graham. “The first is a practical reason. Most statistical analysis tools were built with complete data in mind, so for most analyses, there is simply no convenient way of handling the missing values. The second reason is that missing data behave in many respects like data that were never collected in the first place. If
200 of a person’s 1,000 subjects drop out of the study, statistical power is reduced to what it would have been if the person had collected data on only 800 subjects to begin with. The third reason is that because of the missing data, any conclusions based on the statistical analysis of the data may be biased or misleading. Modern missing data analysis procedures help with all three of these problems.” According to Graham, for researchers with limited missing-data analysis experience, the book offers an easy-to-read introduction to the theoretical underpinnings of analysis of missing data; provides clear, step-by-step instructions for performing state-of-the-art multiple imputation analyses; and offers practical advice, based on 20 years of experience, for avoiding and troubleshooting problems. For more advanced readers, the book provides unique discussions of attrition, non-Monte-Carlo techniques for simulations involving missing data, evaluation of the benefits of auxiliary variables, and cost-effective planned missing data designs. A related website contains free downloads of the supplementary software, as well as sample empirical data sets and a variety of practical exercises described in the book to enhance and reinforce the reader’s learning experience. The book and its website work together to enable beginners to gain confidence in their ability to conduct missing data analysis, and more advanced readers to expand their skill set. bbh.hhd.psu.edu | 5
Global Health Minor Update Throughout the spring semester, Melina Czymoniewicz-Klippel, lecturer and Global Health Minor coordinator, once again has found herself with a full plate as she juggles teaching, research, and service tasks, along with flight and hotel bookings, international Skype calls, and emergency preparedness workshops. She is once again preparing to accompany a group of undergraduate Global Health (GLBHL) Minor students to Africa this summer. This year, 20 students are enrolled in the Department of Biobehavioral Health’s global health fieldwork course. Approximately
half will complete their six-week supervised fieldwork experiences in South Africa (Johannesburg and Polokwane); the other half will travel to Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and surrounds). As last year’s fieldwork students, Jennifer Trammell (nutrition major, global health minor) and Stephanie Ryan (biobehavioral health major, global health and economics minors) express, the opportunity to engage in such an overseas experience is integral to the learning process for all students, in particular those considering a career in global health.
the opportunity to do fieldwork through “theHaving Global Health Minor will definitely be one of
the most favorable and memorable parts of my time here at Penn State. Those six weeks of living in South Africa had such an immense influence on my life and post-graduate/career plans in international nutrition. I met people and saw things that helped me grow both academically and personally. It is a hands-on experience that teaches you things that the classroom and textbooks can’t, and I am so thankful I got the chance to take part in it.
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– Jen Trammell, summer 2012 fieldwork in South Africa
The fieldwork experience really helped me “step out of the bubble that I live in and taught me
to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. After the trip, I feel more ready to step out into the field of global health as an independent and capable person.
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– Stephanie Ryan; summer 2012 fieldwork in South Africa
Graduate Students Receive NSF Fellowships Michelle Martin and Danica Slavish, both Ph.D. candidates in BBH, have received National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. The goal of the highly competitive fellowships is to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees. The fellowship provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research.
“Through this work, I hope to identify opportunities for childhood obesity prevention,” said Martin. “Graduate research fellowships like this one provide students with support that goes well beyond the financial aspect. These fellowships serve as tangible forms of encouragement and reassurance that are so critical in the early stages of graduate education. I am so very grateful to have been awarded with it.”
Under the guidance of Lori Francis, associate professor, Martin’s research will center on children of Latino immigrants in the United States and their role in family functioning related to diet and dietary acculturation. She will also investigate this role’s impact on the development of obesity in children through its effects on children’s psychobiological responses to stress.
Slavish’s research, under the guidance of assistant professor Jennifer Graham, will focus on individual differences in cognitive-emotional appraisal and physiological reactivity to stress. She plans to investigate how individual differences in acute stress
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Michelle Martin
fieldwork experience in Tanzania allowed me “toMyembrace the essence of global health, leaving
me with an understanding of culture, language, and community very much distinct from my own. Through integration and collaboration with my fellow African peers I acquired a panoramic view of the possibilities, complexities, and challenges in global health. What I learned in the classroom was transformed in a most authentic way. Moreover, the global health minor has informed and emboldened my decision to seek a career in global public health.
– Natalie DiRocco, summer 2012 fieldwork in Tanzania
” It was hard while on the ground to see the “impact the experience would make on my life.
But when returning to Africa with a service trip several months later, I realized quickly how much I had changed. I had a confidence in operating in this unfamiliar context and a knowledge of the underlying causes of the symptoms we were trying to address, which none of my peers had.
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– Michael Henry, summer 2012 fieldwork in Tanzania
The GLBHL minor, offered by the Department of Biobehavioral Health, seeks to support undergraduate students in further developing their capacity to think, talk, and write critically about global health issues and challenges. It incorporates both on-campus learning and a required fieldwork experience. Further information on the program can be found at bbh.hhd.psu.edu/globalhealth.
reactivity relate to more ecologically valid measures of day-to-day stress reactivity and immune system dysregulation. More broadly, she is interested in how trait and state mood characteristics can predict immune function and health behaviors. “Although I enjoy being a teaching assistant, the NSF fellowship allows me to focus more on exploring my research interests,” said Slavish. “It also shows me that someone thought my work was important enough to fund, for which I am very grateful.”
Danica Slavish
Kate Sauder, Ph.D. student, was selected for two highly competitive pre-doctoral fellowships: one from the American Heart Association and the other from the National Institute on Aging. Under the super-
vision of Sheila West, associate professor of biobehavioral health, and David Proctor, professor of kinesiology, Kate’s research will examine the impact of a healthy diet on age-related changes in vascular function. The team is collaborating with researchers involved with the Framingham Heart Study, a Massachusetts-based observational study in which data has been collected for more than 50 years. “Framingham taught the world about risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” said West. “Kate’s project will include over 7,000 individuals who submitted dietary information and had vascular assessments conducted under controlled conditions. It is possible that the adverse effects of age on vascular stiffness could be blunted by carefully following dietary guidelines.
Kate Sauder
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BIOBEHAVIORAL HEALTH AFFILIATE PROGRAM GROUP
The Biobehavioral Health Affiliate Program Group (APG) BIOBEHAVIORAL HEALTH comprises BBH alumni/friends of Penn State who have an AFFILIATE PROGRAM GROUP interest in supporting current students and facilitating alumni connections. We work primarily around the “MACS” format, which consists of activities surrounding mentoring, awards, communications, and social/professional activities. We meet once a month via teleconference to plan events, discuss current happenings in the program, and brainstorm ideas for BIOBEHAVIORAL HEALTH student support. If you arePROGRAM interested in serving on the BBH AFFILIATE GROUP APG, we currently are seeking new members. Please contact Alyssa Todaro Brooks (alyssa524@gmail.com) if you are interested in giving back.
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