Research
Overview
Active Research Projects
Principal Investigator: Amy Ai
The Biophysicological Mechanism of Faith Effects on Outcomes Following Major Cardiac Surgery
Funder: John Templeton Foundation
709,000 open-heart surgery procedures were performed in 2002. Numerous studies have associated negative psychological factors (e.g., stress, negative affects or NA) with worse outcomes of cardiac surgery. Yet, faith researchers and positive psychologists have noted the protective role of faith factors (e.g., secure faith) and optimistic expectations (e.g., optimism) in health and wellbeing, including cardiac surgery outcomes. Evidence has linked certian neurohormone and immune/inflammation biomarkers (e.g., C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, cotisol, troponin, creatine-kinase-MB, Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha, leukocyte subsets) with cardiac surgery outcomes, psychological stress, and optimistic expectations, respectively. These associations, however, have never been silmutaneously examined in patients who underwent open-heart surgery. The proposed interdisciplinary study aims at long-term postoperative outcomes of faith factors and optimistic expectations in these patients, counteracting risks of stress and myocardial biomarkers as well as NA, and potential physiological mechanisms underlying this mind-heart interaction.
Principal Investigator: Amy Ai
Improving the Well-being of Hypertensive African Americans: A Pilot Trial on an Ingegrative Intervention with Mechanisms to Demonstrate Social Workers' Leadership in the Health Care Industry.
Funder: The Lois and Samuel Silberman Foundation
Principal Investigators: Ralph Bangs (Co-Principal Investigator: Audrey Murrell, School of Business)
A National Study on Minority and Women Business Contracting
Funder: The National Dream Fund -- The Ford Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Open Society Institute, and the Falk Foundation
The main goals of this project are to: 1) stop actions by local government officials that exclude qualified minority and women business enterprises (M/WBEs) from prime contracts; and 2) get local government to adopt and implement affirmative action policies and practices that will increase prime contracts with these firms. In this project we will focus on three large local governments, such as central city, county, and school district governments, in each of two large urban areas, such as Boston and Chicago. The specific goals are:
- Conduct research that develops knowledge about current rates of local government prime contracts with M/WBEs, actions by local government officials that deny equal opportunity to M/WBEs and result in low levels of prime contracts with M/WBEs, and affirmative action programs to remedy past and present discrimination in local government contracting
- Build relationships between the researchers and local government in order to increase understanding of discriminatory barriers and encourage local government adoption of affirmative action programs
- Build relationships between the researchers and community and legal activists and advocates in order to develop local political and legal strategies to get reluctant local governments to change policies and practice
Co-Investigator: Valire Carr-Copeland (Prinicipal Investigator Jeanette South-Paul in the School of Medicine)
Establishment of Cultural Competency Training at the Schools of Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh
Funder: Pennsylvania Department of Health
Patient populations in the state of Pennsylvania and surrounding states are undergoing shifting cultural, economic, and sociological demographics. Racial/ethnic discordance between patients and health care professionals can create palpable barriers to effective and accurate communication, may lead to decreased quality of care and patient satisfaction, and may increase the potential for errors in medication and treatment.
Cultural competence has been defined as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enable individuals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.(1) The overarching objective of this application is to implement and incorporate formal cultural competency training into health professions curricula within the Schools of the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, and in doing so, translate this training into activities that achieve a positive change in the quality of care received by culturally disparate populations in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Co-Investigator: Shaun Eack (Prinicipal Investigator Nancy Jean Minshew in the School of Medicine)
Deciphering Altered Brain Connectivity in ASD to Improve Intervention.
Funder: Pennsylvania Department of Health
The objectives of this research are to translate recent scientific advances in ASD into a novel intervention, identify mechanisms underlying major behavioral issues in childhood and adulthood that will directly support improvements in everyday treatment, and expand knowledge about the fundamental causative mechanisms of autism that will lead to the next generation of discoveries. The two studies are organized around a central theme reflecting emerging concepts about the basis of autism, namely that the functional and structural connections among and between regions of the developing brain are severely affected. In “Neuropathology and Genetics of Connectivity: Altered Axonal Pathfinding in ASD,” developmental neurobiological studies of gene expression will be conducted in postmortem brain to ascertain patterns of temporal and anatomic involvement to inform the search for genes in ASD. The selection of these axonal pathfinding genes is based on a genome wide association study in ASD families. In “Inducing Plasticity in Cortical Connectivy Via A Novel Intervention in ASD,” a novel visual learning paradigm will be used with adolescents with ASD to enhance multidimensional information integration skills that may generalize to improvement in other cognitive and affective skills. Re-organization in the functional topography and connectivity within visual cortex will be assessed with pre- and post-intervention fMRI. Health status and access will also be improved through a web-based, archived CME accredited lecture program on ASD and related medical and behavioral issues created for a large established pediatric research network (PittNet) that serves 115,000 families in 5 counties representing all racial and geographic segments of Western PA. A collaboration with PLEA, a minority and low income serving ASD organization, will enable implementation of national practice guidelines for assessment and medical treatment of ASD at PLEA. PLEA staff will also receive training to meet research standards of reliability on the ADOS and will participate in the conduct of the research.
Co-Investigator: Shaun Eack (Prinicipal Investigator Nancy Jean Minshew in the School of Medicine)
Adapting Cognitive Enhancement Therapy for Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Funder: National Institute of Mental Health
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are defined by specific behavioral impairments in social interactions, verbal and non-verbal (gaze, face expression, gestures, prosody) communication, imaginative play, and by restricted and repetitive interests and behavior. Underlying these behaviors are deficits in social and nonsocial cognition and information processing. Interventions for autism have largely focused on the preschool years and behavioral methods. Few interventions are available for adults with ASD, and even fewer focus on the remediation of cognitive and social-emotional deficits in a way designed to improve complex adaptive behavior essential for success and achievement in adult life. As a consequence, many verbal adults with ASD experience substantial lifetime disability resulting in great personal and family suffering and great financial cost. In response to RFA-MH-09-021, "Novel Interventions for Neurodevelopmental Disorders," we propose the first step in adapting, piloting and preliminarily testing of the efficacy of Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (CET) for young transitional age high functioning adults with ASD to improve adaptive functioning and adult life achievement in this population. CET is a neurodevelopmentally-based, social-cognitive and neurocognitive rehabilitation program originally developed for schizophrenia that has demonstrated significant improvements in cognition and important functional outcomes. Many of the social, communication, and cognitive impairments experienced by persons with ASD (e.g., impaired theory of mind, deficient emotion perception, poor emotion regulation and expression, inflexibility, executive dysfunction) are also shared by individuals with schizophrenia. These impairments are directly targeted by CET, suggesting that CET may confer substantial benefits to verbal individuals with ASD who often do poorly as adults and for whom few interventions exist.
Principal Investigator: William Elliott
The Direct and Indirect Effects of Homeownership on Boys’ Antisocial Behavior and Academic Achievement by Race and Income: A Longitudinal Analysis based on the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS)
Funder: Central Research Development Fund, University of Pittsburgh
This proposed pilot study would extend previous analyses in several important ways. First, we propose to examine different mediating pathways that homeownership may affect boys’ antisocial behavior and academic achievement using a multi-group structural equation model (SEM). The advantage of using a multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) over traditional regression analyses, which have been the primary method used in this area of study, is that differences between racial groups as well as potential mediating mechanisms can be examined simultaneously (Shrout & Bolger, 2002). While the focus of regression analysis is on the associations of predictors with outcome variables (i.e., regression coefficients), multi-group (SEM) provides a larger picture of the overall structure of relationships among variables in predicting the outcome variable. Given this, mediation can be tested more easily and extensively in multi-group (SEM) compared to traditional regression.
Second, we will examine how household effects vary across race and income level. The proposed methodology is particularly useful for understanding group variations. Multi-group (SEM) allows the comparison of the equality of associations across race and income levels by placing constraints on coefficients across groups. Therefore, in addition to reporting that a certain path is significant in groups (for e.g., among African Americans and among white children) the researcher can report whether or not the coefficients are significantly different across groups.
Third, in addition to amount of education children attain (i.e., high school complete, some college, four year degree) we examine children’s academic performance in math and reading. Most studies examining educational outcomes and homeownership have used amount of education children obtain, and only a few examine math and reading achievement (see e.g., Haurin, et al., 2002; Zhan & Sherraden, 2003). More research is needed in this area. We will also examine other important childhood antisocial outcomes such as delinquency and substance use, including testing whether there are differential effects of predictors across these outcomes.
Principal Investigator: Rachel Fusco
A Vulnerable Population within a Vulnerable Population: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning Youth in Child Welfare
Funder: Central Research Development Fund, University of Pittsburgh
The objectives of this exploratory study are twofold, namely to explore of the current policies and practices in two Pennsylvania county child welfare agencies related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and those youth questioning their sexual or gender identity (LGBTQ), and to examine the current state of research and best practices nationally for this underserved and marginalized population. The goal of this study is to use findings firstly to inform training for all public child welfare workers and secondly to provide the foundation for future work in improving services and eventually outcomes for child welfare involved LGBTQ youth in the Commonwealth.
Co-Principal Investigators: Rachel Fusco and Helen Cahalane; Co-Investigators: Julie McCrea and Marybeth Rautkis
PA Department of Public Welfare Caseworker Visitation Project Research & Evaluation
Funder: PA Department of Public Welfare
Principal Investigator: Catherine Greeno, (Co- Investigator: Carol Anderson, School of Medicine)
Study of outcomes for people discharged from Mayview State Hospital
Funder: Allegheny Health Choices, Inc. (Primary funding from the State of Pennsylvania)
This is a proposal to conduct a detailed study of patient trajectories and outcomes after leaving Mayview State Hospital using primary data collection informed by administrative record review. This is a mixed quantitative/qualitative study that will follow a sample of people discharged from Mayview; the sample is designed to represent all of the people living in Mayview at the time the closing was announced. We plan to follow service use, psychiatric symptomatology, social functioning and social networks using standardized questionnaire assessments. In addition, we will learn about participants’ subjective experiences of leaving the hospital and adjusting to new circumstances through interviews.
The purpose of this study is to provide quality assurance to state providers and policy makers, and to contribute knowledge about predictors of successful outcomes that could lead to future policies to provide the best possible care to people with chronic mental illnesses.
Principal Investigator: Catherine Greeno
"Designed for Translation" Family Therapy for Maternal and Child Problems in Community Health.
Funder: Central Research Development Fund, University of Pittsburgh
There is an urgent need for mental health treatments that are effective, and that are also sustainable in community mental health settings. The uptake of “evidence-based practices” in community mental health settings is often low; in part because these practices, usually developed with little input from community providers, are not always relevant to community needs, or sustainable within community practice constraints. As part of a Community-Based Participatory Research Project we have collaboratively developed a model of Structural Family Therapy to be delivered in a community mental health outpatient setting. Four therapists have been trained, and the community partner is beginning to routinely offer this treatment option. We are seeking support to collect pilot data on the effects of the treatment on children and their mothers. We expect the treatment to improve children’s symptoms and functioning. Furthermore, at least 50% of mothers bringing their children for care experience significant depressive symptomatology, and we expect the treatment to also ameliorate their symptoms. e plan to recruit twenty families to participate in the treatment. Mothers and children will complete standardized assessments when they present for treatment and again three months later. This work has great potential significance. Currently, community mental health centers offer children almost exclusively individual treatment. We expect Structural Family Therapy to improve symptoms and functioning for both children and mothers. Furthermore, because the model was “designed for translation”, that is, the model was collaboratively designed with our community partner, we expect it to be genuinely sustainable within this, and other, community mental health settings.
Principal Investigator: Julie McCrea; Co-Investigators: Helen Cahalane, Rachel Fusco and Marybeth Rautkis
Evaluation of Pennsylvania’s Initiative to Screen Young Children for Mental Health and Developmental Concerns following Contact with Child Welfare
Funder: Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Office of Children Youth and Families
In September, 2008, Pennsylvania implemented standardized socio-emotional and developmental screening of very young children involved with child welfare services using the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) and the Ages and Stages Questionnaires, Social-emotional version (ASQ-SE). This study views policies and procedures that county child welfare agencies across the state have put into place to implement the screening, and views outcomes for children concerning their developmental and socio-emotional concerns, caregiver engagement in the process, and access to early intervention services. The objectives are to produce state-level estimates of the results of ASQ screening, describe policy and practice related to the screening and early intervention, and identify children’s needs and gaps in services. The first phase of the study involves phone interviews with child welfare and early intervention representatives from each of PA’s 67 counties and implementation of a statewide database to track children screened. The second phase of the study involves interviews with caregivers of a random sample of children to view their experiences with the screening and access to early intervention and related services.
Principal Investigator: Daniel Rosen
Providing Depression Care for Older Adult Substance Abusers at Community Agencies
Funder: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Recent analysis of data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicates that the estimated number of people age 50 or older in need of substance abuse treatment is expected to increase from 1.7 million in 2000/2001 to 4.4 million in 2020. Depressive disorders among opiate abusers have detrimental effects on their well-being and ability to refrain from illegal drug use. The training and research activities described in this application will take place in the cross-disciplinary environment of the School of Social Work, the Advanced Center for Interventions and Services Research for Late-life Mood Disorders (Reynolds, PI), and the Drug Abuse Vulnerability: Mechanisms and Manifestations Center (Cornelius, Director of the Clinical Core) at the University of Pittsburgh. Training will enable the Principal Investigator to become proficient in the adaptation, testing, and delivery of an intervention for older adults with co-occurring substance abuse and depression disorders and to develop the knowledge necessary to integrate an effective treatment model into the standard of care offered by substance abuse treatment facilities.
Co-Principal Investigators: Jeffrey Shook and Sara Goodkind
Understanding Transitions to Adulthood for Child Welfare Involved Youth
Funder: The Pittsburgh Foundation and Eden Hall Foundation through the Department of Human Services
One of the more difficult areas of the work of the Department of Human Services (DHS) involves youth making the transition from the child welfare system to adulthood. The challenges of transitioning to adulthood are particularly difficult for those without stable family and material support. Many youth have poor outcomes in educational attainment and employment, as well as experience criminal justice involvement, poverty, and homelessness. Few studies exist that address factors affecting successful or unsuccessful transition to adulthood for these youth, and those that do are limited in scope.
This initiative will extensively document how experiences in the child welfare system are associated with subsequent outcomes. The integrated nature of services provided through DHS and the capacity of their unique database provide a comprehensive source of administrative data unavailable in most other systems throughout the country. This will allow for an examination of the degree to which youth are involved in multiple systems and enable a comparison of these groups across specific outcomes.
This research will provide a solid understanding of factors affecting subsequent outcomes for youth involved in the child welfare system. It builds on current DHS efforts to improve these services and supports by generating comprehensive, quantifiable information on youths’ experiences and outcomes. It will provide crucial information that will enable service providers to target efforts in shaping policies and practices to improve educational, economic and social outcomes for these vulnerable youth as they become adults.
Principal Investigator: Fengyan Tang
Productive Engagement and Health in the Retirement Transition Process
Funder:The Lois and Samuel Silberman Fund
This project investigates health change trajectories in relation to productive engagement in working and volunteering among middle-aged and older persons as a function of the latent structure of retirement transitions. This project also examines group differences (birth cohort, gender, race, and social class) in the relationship between productive engagement and health. The current cohorts of older adults are engaging in increasing amounts of productive activity of working and volunteering. As baby boomers age, there will be significant potential for even greater productive engagement with longer, phased-out connections to the workplace. The continued participation in employment will boost volunteering engagement through the social networks linked with employment. Productive engagement promotes well-being among older adult participants in terms of protection against the declines in psychological, physical, and cognitive functioning. This project responds to the recent trend towards phased retirement and continuing productive engagement in later life, providing a more thorough understanding of the latent structure of retirement transition and its effects on volunteering engagement. Further, this project will contribute to the current research literature on productive engagement by examining how developmental trajectories of health change vary with levels of commitment to productive activities at different stages of the work-retirement continuum. In addition, this project investigates whether there are multiple developmental pathways for all individuals experiencing changes in health and productive activities during the retirement transition process.
Principal Investigator: Fengyan Tang
Aging in Place
Funder:Central Research Development Fund, University of Pittsburgh
Principal Investigator: John Wallace (Co-Principal Investigator: Michael Yonas, School of Medicine)
The Pittsburgh Initiative to Reduce Crime
Funder: The City of pittsburgh
Although Pittsburgh is recognized as one of the safest major cities in the nation, the problem of gun violence—particularly in specific neighborhoods and among particular populations—remains an important problem. More specifically, more than half (55%) of Pittsburgh’s homicides in 2006 occurred in just 10 of the city’s 90 neighborhoods and although African Americans comprised only 27 percent of the Pittsburgh’s population in 2006 they accounted for nearly 90 percent of the city’s homicide victims (Dalton, 2007). Further, the 2006 homicide rate among African American was more than 18 times the rate among whites (i.e., 52.9 per 100,000 versus 2.9 per 100,000.
In response to the violence problem , Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Councilman Ricky Burgess and other Pittsburgh leaders are working with Professor David Kennedy from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to adapt Professor Kennedy’s nationally recognized Boston Gun Project model to Pittsburgh—the Pittsburgh Initiative to Reduce Crime (PIRC).
In an effort to assess the effectiveness of the PIRC strategy, Drs. John Wallace and Michael Yonas will collaborate with the governing board of the PIRC, with Pittsburgh law enforcement, with social service providers, clergy, community members, and with other key stakeholders to accomplish the following specific aims:
- To conduct an incident review of homicides in the City of Pittsburgh (2003-2008)
- To analyze the networks of relationships that exist between street-level groups involved in gun violence in Pittsburgh
- To document the design and implementation process of the PIRC
- To evaluate the impact of the PIRC on gun-related violence and homicide in the City of Pittsburgh
- To make recommendations to the City on ways to address the problem of violence based on lessons learned from the implementation of the PIRC
Principal Investigator: John Wallace
Comm-Univer-City of Pittsburgh
Funder: University of Pittsburgh
The Comm-Univer-City of Pittsburgh is an integrated program of research, teaching and service designed to investigate and ameliorate social problems that disproportionately impact economically disadvantaged children, families and communities.
Through the Comm-Univer-City of Pittsburgh initiative, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students will work with Homewood residents, faith and community-based organizations, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the United Way, and other individuals and organizations to initiate the Homewood Children’s Village project. The Homewood Children’s Village is an adaptation of Geoffrey Canada’s internationally acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone, a New York based comprehensive community initiative (see www.hcz.org).
- RESEARCH AIM: To engage faculty, students and community members in community-based participatory research projects designed to produce actionable knowledge needed to address pressing social problems that impact the lives of children and families in Homewood-Brushton. The first research project will engage Pitt students in the identification and assessment of the initial blocks that will comprise the “Homewood Children’s Village.”
- TEACHING AIM: To create an educational “immersion” experience for students by relocating the classroom from the campus to the community through Dr. Wallace’s course, SW 2047 Community-Based Participatory Research. The course is taught in Homewood-Brushton and, in addition to traditional classroom lectures and discussions, offers students “hands-on” training in community-based research methods and community organizing.
- SERVICE AIM: To implement a field-placement model that locates masters level social work interns in selected Homewood social service agencies and organizations. Interns and faculty members will help to increase the capacity of community organizations and residents as they involve them in the community-based research projects and the classroom instruction.
Co-Investigator: John Wallace (Prinicpal Investigator: Lloyd D. Johnston, University of Michigan)
Drug Use and Lifestyles of American Youth
Funder: National Institute of Drug Abuse (University of Michigan)
This study is a collaboration with the University of Michigan. Dr. Wallace works closely with the researchers in Michagan to do the following: 1)
examine within and between group racial/ethnic differences and similarities
in patterns, trends, and correlates of drug-related attitudes, beliefs and
behaviors; 2) conduct racial/ethnic and gender specific analyses that seek
to identify whether risk and protective factors found to be important for
White males and females are also important correlates and predictors for
non-white youth; 3) investigate the mechanisms through which individual-
and contextual-level religiosity influences substance use.