Grants and Awards

InCHIP PIs Secure New External Grants in Several Health Domains

FY20 was a banner year for InCHIP – 35 new external grants were awarded to InCHIP Principal Investigators (PIs) to address critical health issues such as cancer prevention, HIV prevention, pain management, and school health. These grants increased UConn’s grant portfolio by $22 million in total costs ($16.6 million in direct costs and $5.4 million in indirect costs), representing a 62% increase at InCHIP from FY19 awards. Brief descriptions of new external grants funded in FY20 are provided below, and a full list of newly awarded and active grants at InCHIP can be found in Appendix II.

Cancer Prevention

Rick Gibbons, PhD (Psychological Sciences) received a diversity supplement to his National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH) R01 to support the training of an earlystage faculty member examining methylationbased mechanisms linking social influences with health and health behavior.

Sherry Pagoto, PhD (Allied Health Sciences/ Center for mHealth and Social Media) was awarded a three-year supplement from the NIH to examine the effects of a social media-delivered intervention targeting indoor tanning users.

COVID-19

Two NSF RAPID grants were awarded to InCHIP affiliates in spring 2020. Sherry Pagoto, PhD received funding to explore the disproportionate impact of campus closures on undergraduate students who are economically disadvantaged or from underrepresented minority groups. Natalie Shook, PhD (Nursing) who joined UConn this year, received support for her longitudinal study examining attitudes and behaviors that predict adherence to COVID-19 prevention recommendations.

Food Marketing, Policies, and Systems

Tatiana Andreyeva, PhD (Agricultural & Resource Economics/Rudd Center) received two awards in FY20 to examine aspects of the child and adult care food program – one looking at the capabilities of an online training platform (CT State Department of Education) and the other looking at how the program can improve food access and reduce dietary and health inequities (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, RWJF). Andreyeva was also funded by the CDC to determine the effect of an excise tax on sweetened beverages in CT.

Kristen Cooksey

Stowers, PhD (Allied Health Sciences) received a oneyear grant as the evaluator on the Invest Health Hartford Team, a coalition led by the United Way and funded by the RWJF and the Food Trust. She is leading a mixed-methods research project (i.e., photovoice and surveys) assessing North Hartford Promise Zone residents’ perceptions of their neighborhood food

Seth Kalichman, PhD (Psychological Sciences) was awarded nearly $6.5 million from NIH this year to support three separate HIV-prevention projects. He received two multi-year R01s from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH/NIH). The first project examines an intervention designed to improve HIV care retention and medication adherence in stigmatized environments. The second project seeks to identify what dose of an evidence-based behavioral intervention is needed to effectively implement the intervention in a community setting. Kalichman also received an R21 (NIMH/ NIH) to develop a novel way of assessing intersectional stigma in Black men who have sex with men, a group at high risk for HIV.

His success in FY20 builds on a long career of distinction – Kalichman has received more than $40 million from NIH to inform behavioral and social responses to HIV. The interventions he has developed and tested with his team have prevented the spread of HIV and assisted people living with HIV to live long and healthy lives through increased access to and retention in health care, and increased medication adherence. environment, eating habits, and the factors that influence food shopping.

Nathan Fiala, PhD (Agricultural & Resource Economics) was awarded a three-year grant from the USDA to study skills gaps and strategies for economic growth in rural New England, including working with local chambers of commerce to understand missing skills needs and high schools to educate students about technical career options. His work will also look at the impact of COVID-19 and poverty on opioid addiction.

Frances Fleming-Milici, PhD (Rudd Center) and Sally Mancini, MPH (Rudd Center) are the PIs on a $2.9 million renewal from the (RWJF) to continue investigations of how best to encourage industry and government action to reduce marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Mancini also received a renewal from Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems and the USDA National Agricultural Library for her work on the Healthy Food Policy Project, which created a database of local laws and case studies on policies that improve access to healthy food and promote health equity, support local economies, and/or foster improved environmental outcomes.

Marlene Schwartz, PhD (HDFS/Rudd Center) received three awards that involve improving nutrition across different settings and evaluating the impact of policy changes. She is working with the Partnership for a Healthier America to assess policy changes to improve nutrition in child care centers and food banks. The RWJF’s Healthy Eating Research Program funded her to continue developing tools to support food banks in tracking the nutritional quality of their inventory. The Horizon Foundation provided a grant to assess the impact of its community-wide campaign to reduce sugary drink consumption in Howard County, Maryland.

Pain Management

Steven Kinsey, PhD (Nursing), a new faculty member in Nursing, received funding from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH/ NIH) to evaluate the efficacy

of biosynthesized minor cannabinoids and terpenes in reducing thermal, inflammatory, neuropathic, and visceral pain.

Crystal Park, PhD (Psychological Sciences) and Angela Starkweather, PhD, RN (Nursing) received a five-year, $3.0 million R01 from NCCIH to establish the biological and psychological pathways through which yoga interventions reduce chronic low back pain.

Religion and Health

The John Templeton Foundation supported the work of two InCHIP affiliates. Crystal Park, PhD (Psychological Sciences) was funded to examine how, in the context of suffering, the Christian worldview shapes the search for meaning and purpose and the capacity to flourish. Richard Sosis, PhD (Anthropology) received support to explore the influence of religion on reproductive decisionmaking and child health and educational outcomes. Sosis received a second award to explore the connection between religion and sport and the adaptive consequences of syncretic meaning systems.

School Health

Sandra Chafouleas, PhD (Educational Psychology/ Collaboratory on School and Child Health) received a fiveyear award from the Institute of Education Sciences. With her partners at the University of Kansas, the team is working to develop and refine structural processes and resources to enhance scaling up a comprehensive model that includes academic, behavioral, and social learning supports (Ci3T), specifically focusing on enhancing leadership skills, building the capacity of Ci3T Leadership Teams, and creating efficient systems for behavior screening. The team will then conduct an efficacy trial of the enhanced Ci3T model.

Marlene Schwartz, PhD (HDFS/Rudd Center) received two awards to examine school wellness policies, one in Kansas (Kansas Health Foundation) to evaluate the impact of their state-wide wellness promotion efforts over the past five years, and the other, in collaboration with Chafouleas, in Connecticut (CT State Department of Education) as districts strengthen and implement wellness policies.

Substance Use

Deborah

Cornman, PhD (InCHIP) and Beth Russell, PhD (HDFS) received a oneyear grant to examine the efficacy of Waterbury’s Warm Hand-Off Program, a newly developed program that aims to reduce opioid overdoses by having trained behavioral health clinicians work with survivors and encourage them to get into treatment.

Michael Fendrich, PhD (Social Work), Crystal Park, PhD (Psychological Sciences), and Beth Russell, PhD (HDFS) were awarded a planning grant (R34) from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA/NIH) to develop emotion regulation interventions to prevent

escalation in college drinking.

Seth Kalichman, PhD (Psychological Sciences) was awarded a subcontract to UCLA for NIH-funded work examining the effectiveness of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-based mHealth intervention targeting retention and adherence to medications for opioid use disorder.

Ryan Watson, PhD (HDFS) and Jessica Fish, PhD (University of Maryland) will be looking at risk and protective factors of substance use in sexual and gender minority youth with the support of an R03 funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH).

Weight Management

Loneke Blackman

Carr, PhD, RD (Nutritional Sciences) received an NIH supplement with colleagues at Duke University to understand the context of dietary choices and examine how best to recruit Black adults with hypertension into a digital health intervention to improve diet quality.

Tricia Leahey, PhD (Allied Health Sciences) received a five-year, $3.3 million R01 award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK/NIH) to examine behavioral economics strategies to address please visit the InCHIP website. obesity in economically disadvantaged adults.

Jeanne McCaffery, PhD (Allied Health Sciences) received an award from Westat/NCI to identify potential genetic predictors of weight-loss treatment response by conducting genome-wide association studies in randomized controlled trials of lifestyle weight-loss interventions.

Weight Watchers (WW) funded two InCHIP affiliates in FY20. Sherry Pagoto, PhD (Allied Health Sciences/ Center for mHealth and Social Media) received a one-year award to examine a multicomponent digital weight program within the WW platform. Rebecca Puhl, PhD (HDFS/ Rudd Center) was awarded a two-year grant to conduct a multi-national comparison of weight stigma, internalized bias, and coping strategies

For more information on InCHIP’s Grants Management Services, among adults engaged in WW.

Seed Grants Fund Innovative Research on a Wide Range of Health Topics

Each year, InCHIP’s Seed Grant Program funds pilot projects that are novel, examine significant health-related research questions, and are

likely to lead to external funding. Newly funded projects in FY20 address a diverse range of issues, including firearm medical screenings in clinical settings, non-occupational pesticide exposure and achievement among youth, the effects of aging on elastic tissue mechanics, social isolation among older adults, and weight-control approaches for Black women.

2020 Seed Grant Awardees InCHIP Rolling Seed Grants to Develop New Interdisciplinary Research Teams

César Abadía-Barrero, DMD, DMSc (Anthropology/Human Rights Institute) and

Alejandro Reyes Bermúdez, PhD (Universidad de la Amazonia) for “From Environmental

Degradation to Buen Vivir: Using Participatory

Action Research to Promote Community Auto

Sustainability while Protecting Biodiversity and

Ecosystem Services”

Loneke Blackman Carr, PhD, RD (Nutritional

Sciences) and Shardé Davis, PhD (Communication) for “Sistah Circles for Weight

Control: Investigating Novel Intervention

Approaches for Black Women”

Kristen Cooksey Stowers, PhD, MPP (Allied

Health Sciences) and Kim Gans, PhD,

MPH (HDFS) for “The Healthy Hartford Hub

Evaluation Planning”

FY20 InCHIP Gun Violence Prevention Seed Grant

Jennifer Dineen, PhD, Kerri Raissian, PhD (Public Policy), and Mitchell Doucette, PhD (Eastern Connecticut State University) for

“Using Interviews to Learn What Physicians Can Tell Us about Facilitators and Barriers to

Firearm Medical Screenings in Diverse Clinical

Settings”

FY20 InCHIP Seed Grants for Faculty Affiliates

Sandro Steinbach, PhD (Agricultural and

Resource Economics), Douglas Brugge,

PhD (Public Health Sciences), and Eric

Loken, PhD (Educational Psychology) for

“Non-Occupational Pesticide Exposure and

Academic Achievements of Children and

Adolescents”

Anna Tarakanova, PhD (Mechanical

Engineering) for “A Multiscale In Silico

Approach for Deconstructing Aging

Mechanisms in Elastic Arterial Tissue”

FY20 InCHIP Community-Engaged Health Research Seed Grant

Greg Rhee, PhD, MSW (Public Health

Sciences), Jean Schensul, PhD (Institute for

Community Research), and Robyn Harper

Gulley (North Central CT Area Agency on

Aging) for “Social Isolation, Loneliness, and

Interventional Approaches with Low-Income

Older Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Distribution of Seed Grant PIs Across UConn

Engineering 1 NEAG 1 UConn Health 2 CLAS 5

CAHNR 3

FY20 InCHIP Award Winners Annual Meeting Poster Competition and Science Showcase

As part of InCHIP’s Annual Meeting in September 2019, UConn graduate students and postdocs showcased their healthrelated research in InCHIP’s first annual poster competition. Graduate students and postdocs from 13 departments across UConn presented 15 posters. The top three posters, as judged by InCHIP leadership, were announced that day. The awardwinning posters were:

First Place: Matthew Sullivan, MS (Psychological Sciences) and Lisa Eaton, PhD (HDFS), “Psychosocial Predictors of PrEP Uptake in Black Men Who Have Sex with Men”

Second Place: Ellen Pudney (HDFS), Mary Himmelstein, PhD (Rudd Center), Rebecca Puhl, PhD (HDFS/Rudd Center), and Gary Foster, PhD (WW, Inc.), “A Mixed Methods Analysis Examining Differential Patterns of Long-Term Distress from Weight Stigma”

Third Place: Mary Mulrooney, PharmD, MBA (Pharmacy Practice), Marie Smith, PharmD (Pharmacy Practice) and Erika Vuernick, PharmD (Pharmacy Practice), “Population Health Pharmacist Recommendations for Uncontrolled Hypertension in a Primary Care Organization”

Fisher Fellowship

Faculty reviewers unanimously selected Matthew Sullivan, MS (Psychological Services) to receive the Fisher Fellowship for his dissertation, “Stigma, Coping,

Poster Competition Winners

and HIV PrEP Adherence and Persistence in People with Opioid Use Disorder in Treatment: Patient and Prescriber Facilitators and Barriers to HIV Risk Reduction.” His dissertation adviser is InCHIP Affiliate Dean Cruess, PhD (Psychological Sciences). Working with fellowship mentors Seth Kalichman, PhD (psychological Sciences) and Lisa Eaton, PhD (HDFS), Sullivan completed fours years as a T32 Training Fellow in the Social Processes of AIDS at InCHIP.

The Jeffrey D. Fisher Health Behavior Change Research Fellowship was created in 2019 to celebrate the career of Jeff Fisher, PhD, the founding Director of the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP). During Fisher’s tenure as Director, InCHIP grew from a small group of HIV researchers in the Department of Psychological Sciences to a university-wide, interdisciplinary institute of faculty and graduate students focused on a broad array of health-related research.

InCHIP Excellence Awards

Three excellence awards are given each year to recognize the outstanding work of InCHIP faculty affiliates. The following FY20 awardees each received $500 in research funds.

Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award

Sandro Steinbach, PhD (Agricultural and Resource Economics) joined UConn in Fall 2018. He works at the intersection of environmental and health economics, and much of his research focuses on the interlink between human systems and the environment. Steinbach uses interdisciplinary research approaches to investigate the impact of environmental pollutants on human health, and much of his work aims to impact policy reform around pollution. His research helps policymakers by improving the design of appropriate policies that will ultimately reduce the negative implications of exposure to environmental pollutants.

Community-Engaged Health Research Excellence Award

Wizdom Powell, PhD, MPH (Psychiatry/Health Disparities Institute) is a leading scholar on health disparities. She focuses her community-based research on the role of modern racism and gender norms on African American male health outcomes and healthcare inequities. InCHIP recognizes the tireless work Powell and her team at HDI undertake — raising the voices of men and boys of color and addressing inequities head-on through community-engaged research, dissemination, and advocacy efforts. She previously served as a White House Fellow to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta under President Obama, and she is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship, the RWJF’s Health & Society Scholars program, the Kaiser Permanente Burch Leadership Development Award, the UNC Institute of African American Research Fellowship, and the Ford Foundation’s PreDoctoral Fellowship.

Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award

Since her arrival at UConn in 2014, Kim Gans, PhD (HDFS) has mentored many early career researchers in obesity-related fields. She has worked extensively with junior faculty as they pursue their first NIH grants, provided opportunities for diversity supplements, and acted as a senior co-investigator on many junior faculty’s internally-funded projects. Gans’ mentees are from departments across the University — reflecting a truly interdisciplinary approach that benefits all of UConn.