InCHIP Center Reports

Rudd Center Research Drives Policy Internationally, Nationally, and Locally

The mission of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity is to promote solutions to childhood obesity, poor diet, and weight bias through

research and policy. Since its inception, the Rudd Center has been known in both national and international circles as the place where science and public policy intersect, where new and constructive dialogue takes place, and where innovation linked to action is a guiding philosophy.

Under the leadership of Director Marlene Schwartz, PhD (HDFS) and Deputy Director Rebecca Puhl, PhD (HDFS), the Rudd Center had a highly productive year. They maintained a strong media presence nationally and in Connecticut, continuing to garner significant publicity for the University through high visibility online, print, and broadcast media. This included appearances in national outlets (e.g., The Washington Post, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, The Atlantic, CBS News, NBC News, Bloomberg) as well as in Connecticut media outlets (e.g., New

Tatiana Andreyeva (Rudd Center Director of Economic Initiatives) and Marlene Schwartz (Rudd Center Director) at a podcast recording. Rebecca Puhl (Rudd Center Deputy Director) at the National Academics of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Obesity Solutions.

Haven Register, Connecticut Post, Stamford Advocate, The Middletown Press). Collectively, the Center and its faculty and staff averaged 26 online and print media appearances per week. The Center also expanded its social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and its website logged more than 132,000 visits in FY20. One of the most frequently visited sections of the Rudd Center website was the WellSAT 3.0 webpage, which school officials across the country use to assess the quality of their districts’ school wellness policies.

In FY20, Rudd Center faculty and staff maintained a high level of scholarship productivity with several peer-reviewed articles and invited editorials published in high-impact and flagship scholarly journals (e.g., American Journal of Public Health, American Psychologist, Health Psychology, Journal of Public Health Policy, Journal of School Health, Nature Medicine,

Public Health Nutrition). They also gave dozens of invited presentations across the country and internationally at annual national conferences (e.g., American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association, National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, and Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior) as well as at esteemed institutions and organizations such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the World Health Organization. This breadth reflects the continued relevance of the Rudd Center’s work across multiple disciplines of public health, medicine, nutrition, obesity, psychology, and education and underscores the strong national reputation of Rudd Center faculty who are frequently sought for their research expertise.

Rudd Center faculty actively engaged in research collaborations with faculty across seven UConn schools and departments as well as with faculty at 20 universities nationally and worldwide. They also continued existing and established new research collaborations with 22 state and national organizations (e.g., Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Connecticut State Departments of Education and Public Health, Feeding America, Hartford Hospital, New York State Department of Public Health, and USDA Economic Research Service). One outcome of these many collaborations was that Rudd Center faculty were awarded over $4 million in external funding this past year for 12 new grants that are investigating a range of topics such as weight bias and discrimnation toward obese children and adults, unhealthy food marketing to children, the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages, and nutritional offerings in food banks. The funding agencies included the Connecticut Department of Education, Horizon Foundation, Partnership for a Healthier America, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and WW International, Inc.

The Rudd Center plays the vital role of leader in disseminating the Center’s research to inform the latest legal and public discourse on food policy. Over the past year, Center staff communicated with 119 policy and advocacy organizations, which often included providing policy briefs they created with summaries of relevant Center

Sally Mancini (Rudd Center Director of Advocacy Resources) and Kristin Messina (Rudd Center Communications Manager) at InCHIP’s Annual Meeting.

research. Their research informed specific policy issues in the following areas: protecting federal school meal nutrition standards, reducing sugary drink consumption in the District of Columbia through an excise tax on sugary drinks (the Healthy Beverages Choices Act of 2019), addressing college food insecurity in Connecticut, creating a state school wellness policy in New York, reducing toddler milk consumption nationally, and prohibiting weight discrimination in Massachusetts and other states. In addition, they provided expert testimony at legislative hearings on: prohibiting the sale of energy drinks to children age 16 and under; healthier beverages offered with kids’ meals; and a bill to expand access to SNAP for college students.

The Rudd Center continues to provide obesity research training opportunities for UConn students across multiple disciplines, including both research assistantships and summer internships. In FY20, Rudd faculty supervised 11 undergraduate students, and advised or mentored five master’s students, and nine PhD students. They also trained five full-time postdocs, three of whom completed their fellowships at the Center and began ladder faculty positions in fall 2019 at UConn, Kent State University, and Saint Louis University. Two new postdocs from UCLA and Utah State University began fellowships at the Center in September 2019, and a third postdoc from UNC Chapel Hill began her fellowship in June 2020.

Center for mHealth and Social Media Hosts Successful Virtual Conference

The mission of the UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media is to advance the science of digital health by exploring novel applications of digital technologies to health problems, using technology to increase the impact and reach of health interventions, leveraging technology to gain a deeper understanding of health issues, and developing new methodologies with digital

health tools to conduct clinical research. The Center’s priorities are in the areas of research methodology and training.

Sherry Pagoto, PhD (Allied Health Sciences) directs the Center; Molly Waring, PhD (Allied Health Sciences) leads the Methodology Core; and Jessica Bibeau, MA, PMP serves as the Program Director. The Center employs three fulltime research staff, a part-time program assistant, four graduate students, and four undergraduate interns. Pagoto and Waring advise seven graduate students in Allied Health Sciences, and they have provided 15 undergraduate students with hands-on experience working on Center research projects. There is a rotation of coursecredit internships provided year-round at the Center.

This past year, the Center welcomed six affiliate faculty from six different departments: Loneke Blackman Carr, PhD, RD (Nutritional Sciences), Kim Gans, PhD (HDFS), Debs Ghosh, PhD (Geography), Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, PhD (Communication), Joel Salisbury, MFA (Web and Interactive Media Design), and Ran Xu, PhD (Allied Health Sciences). Center faculty, staff, and students gave multiple invited talks and presentations at national and international conferences; they published a variety of scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals; and their work and

Sherry Pagoto (CHASM Director) and Molly Waring (CHASM Methodology Core Director) address colleagues at InCHIP’s Annual Meeting.

Screenshot from virtual conference held in May 2020.

comments appeared in numerous online articles in Time, CNBC, U.S. News & World Report, Shape Magazine, and UConn Today.

In terms of grant funding, Pagoto and Waring are PI or Co-I on over $6.8 million in grants, two of which were newly funded in 2020. In addition, they are investigators on four grant proposals under review.

The Center hosted numerous events in FY20, including webinars, workshops, and their annual conference. Five live webinars with 721 registrants were recorded and posted on YouTube where they garnered over 1,000 views. In addition to the webinars, the Center sponsored three paid 90- to 150-minute workshops with 174 registrants.

Due to COVID-19, the 2020 Annual Conference was modified to a 100% virtual format. The conference, entitled “Building an Evidence Base for Commercially Available Technology,” focused on research that evaluates the reliability, accuracy, efficacy, or real-world effectiveness of commercially available technology, including mobile apps, sensors, devices, and social media platforms. Held on May 14-15, 2020, the conference featured nationally renowned keynote speakers from academia and industry who have expertise in using commercially available health technologies in research. Attendees had the opportunity to participate in virtual breakout sessions to seek advice from speakers on anything from developing relationships with industry to innovative research designs. In addition, three workshops were held on May 15: “Research Designs for Testing Commercially Available Technology,” “How to Write an Effective Seed Grant,” and “Introduction to Social Network Analysis.”

In lieu of a traditional poster session, a video poster session was held. Presenters produced a one-minute video summarizing their research, and awards were given to the video with the most views (“The Perceptions of Instagram Use on Exercise Adherence and Intrinsic Motivation in Young Adults” by Christie Idiong, MS) and to those selected by judges as the Best Video Poster by a Student (“Presence of Safety Disclaimers in Instagram Posts about Physical Activity during Pregnancy” by Brooke Libby) and Best Video Poster Overall (“Response Patterns and Effects of a Text Message-Based Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intervention for Rural Caregivers and Children” by Maryam Yuhas, PhD, RD, University of Virginia). The 36 poster videos have over 2,000 views on the Center’s YouTube playlist. On the Conference feedback survey, 51% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they viewed more video posters online than they would have if the format had been in-person posters.

Although the Center had only had a matter of weeks to redesign the Conference for virtual delivery, it was a huge success, with 206 attendees from 50 institutions, 13 companies, four continents, seven countries, and 25 states.

Collaboratory on School and Child Health

Underscores Importance of Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model

InCHIP’s Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH) was established by Co-Directors Sandy Chafouleas, PhD (Educational Psychology) and Carol Polifroni, EdD, RN (Nursing) along with a multidisciplinary team of faculty “to facilitate innovative and impactful connections across research, policy, and practice arenas relevant to school and child health.” CSCH had a productive FY20, increasing its number of affiliates to 152, developing resources for schools in response to COVID-19, and disseminating important research findings.

Development and Release of the WellSAT WSCC Tool

Together with the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, CSCH released the WellSAT WSCC, a comprehensive school policy evaluation tool aligned with the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). The WellSAT WSCC expands the Rudd Center’s WellSAT, a tool for evaluation of school wellness policy, to include items that address all the WSCC domains connected to child health and learning. CSCH Steering Committee member and Rudd Center Director Marlene Schwartz, PhD (HDFS) and Chafouleas collaborated on developing the WellSAT WSCC and have worked with the state Department of Education to pilot the measure with

Sandy Chafouleas (CSCH Director), third from left, and Helen Marcy (CSCH Program Manager), center, at InCHIP’s Annual Meeting

over 50 Connecticut school districts to date. An article describing the development of the tool will be published in the September 2020 issue of the Journal of School Health. For more information about the WSCC-related materials developed by CSCH, see the Think About the Link project.

Second Symposium and Legislative Briefing

In October 2019, CSCH co-sponsored and hosted the “Symposium on Trauma-Informed School Mental Health 2.0.” Approximately 70 school, behavioral health, community, and research leaders from across the state gathered to discuss how to align work around trauma-informed schools in Connecticut. The symposium’s goal was to advance the work of the Connecticut Trauma CSCH Reports and Briefs in Response to COVID-19 Recognizing the need for schools to address the COVID-19 pandemic using a whole school, whole community, whole child approach, CSCH published two reports on the social emotional health of students and how school personnel can address it. In addition, a CSCH brief was published to highlight why a whole school approach (i.e., engaging the WSCC model) should be used when reopening

CSCH’s Trauma Symposium in October 2019

schools. CSCH Briefs and Profiles of Affiliates and Projects In the fall of 2019, CSCH began disseminating research findings via briefs. CSCH released 10 briefs in FY20, with most based on affiliate research and written collaboratively with CSCH staff and undergraduate and graduate students. Briefs covered a range of topics including child migrant rights, family caregivers of children with disabilities, gender expansive youth, opiate-exposed infants, and child neglect. CSCH also highlighted the work of affiliates on social media, using researcher and

Childhood Trauma and School Mental Health:

project profiles. Informed School Mental Health Taskforce that was formed after the 2017 symposium. In addition, the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children and Seniors sponsored a legislative forum on student well-being, at which Chafouleas discussed policy recommendations stemming from the symposium. CSCH Podcast In October 2019, CSCH launched its CSCH Podcast which is now searchable through podcatchers like iTunes, Spotify, and others. Staff produced four episodes on the following topics: WellSAT WSCC school policy evaluation tool (Schwartz & , Chafouleas), disparities in access to HIV-prevention Disseminating Research to a Broad Audience tools (Ryan Watson, PhD, HDFS), LGBTQ Youth The CSCH Steering Committee focused heavily on and substance abuse (Watson), and the Self-Care disseminating research findings during the 2019-20 of Caregivers of Children with Developmental academic year, particularly research with evidenceDisabilities (Chafouleas & Emily Iovino, PhD, informed practice and policy implications. Educational Psychology).