Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences

A Collaborative Approach to Cancer Prevention: Identifying and Reducing Exposures to Antineoplastic Drugs
Antineoplastic drugs that are used to fight cancer have known toxic side effects, but the benefits of treatment typically outweigh the risks for cancer patients. The same is not true for the more than eight million healthcare workers, volunteers, and family members in the U.S. that are exposed to those drugs while caring for them. In this presentation, Susan Arnold will describe how widespread, low-level environmental contamination puts caregivers at risk of exposure and increases their risk of toxic effects including spontaneous abortion and cancers like leukemia. She will present how her interdisciplinary research team is focused on improving exposure surveillance and cleaning methods to prevent cancer by reducing environmental exposure risks.

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Susan Arnold is an assistant professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. She specializes in developing, evaluating, and applying mathematical exposure models to estimate exposures in novel occupational environments; and brings more than 20 years of experience working in private industry as a Certified Industrial Hygienist to her research.

PhD Student, Division of Environmental Health Sciences

Moral Injury: A Statewide Assessment on the Burden, Risk, and Protective Factors in Minnesota Firefighters
Moral injury is a violation to one’s deeply held moral beliefs; some symptoms include guilt, shame, anger, and betrayal. The Expressions of Moral Injury Scale—Military Version (EMIS-M) is a questionnaire-based scale measuring moral injury symptoms. Despite our understanding of moral injury in veterans, the impact of moral injury on firefighter’s mental wellness is limited and no scale exists to measure it in this occupation. To address these gaps, Doug DeMoulin will describe how his study employed a two-round Delphi Method by recruiting a diverse group of experts to evaluate and modify the EMIS-M specifically for firefighters (EMIS-F); then used pilot-tests to assess item clarity, quality, and relevancy in the fire service. And how the study will measure the statewide burden, risk and protective factors associated with moral injury in Minnesota firefighters.

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Doug DeMoulin is a third year PhD student in the Occupational Injury Prevention Research Training (OIPRT) program. He received his B.S. and M.S in Occupational Safety and Health at Murray State University. His research interests are to understand the health and well-being in first-responders, and to improve systems of emergency preparedness and response in the workplace. He is involved in a statewide study assessing mental wellness in Minnesota firefighters with his advisor, Dr. Hyun Kim. His dissertation aims to assess the burden, risk and protective factors of moral injury in Minnesota firefighters.

PhD student Division of Biostatistics

Understanding Stigma Experienced by Ebola Virus Disease survivors in Liberia
In June of 2015, the Partnership for Research on Ebola Virus in Liberia (PREVAIL) began a 5-year natural history study following a cohort of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) survivors in Liberia. At the initial and 18-month visit, researchers administered a questionnaire to participants in order to assess stigma. In this presentation, Clara Drew will present how using these data, she begin to understand how long reported levels of stigma persisted among survivors, who experienced the most stigma, and whether higher levels of stigma were reported among those continuing to experience clinical symptoms. Experiencing stigma can negatively affect both mental and physical health as well as create social barriers to accessing healthcare. Understanding who is affected by EVD-related stigma is the first step to alleviating its harms and preventing the stigmatization of survivors of future outbreaks.

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Clara Drew is a third year PhD student in the School of Public Health Division of Biostatistics. She received her BA from Macalester College in Applied Mathematics and Statistics with a concentration in Community and Global Health. Since fall of 2017, she has worked as a research assistant under Professor Cavan Reilly, on the Partnership for Research on Ebola Virus in Liberia natural history study (PREVAIL-III). Her research interests include infectious disease testing, latent class models and missing data analysis.

Carrie Henning-Smith, PhD, MPH, MSW
Assistant Professor, Division of Health Policy & Management

Ashley Hernandez
PhD student, Division of Environmental Health Sciences

Uncovering Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and Health Care among Rural Residents
In this presentation Carrie Henning Smith and Ashley Hernandez will highlight research from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center on racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care among rural residents. Results include differences in county-level premature death by county racial and ethnic composition; individual-level differences in health status by race and ethnicity; and differences in health care access and use by race and ethnicity. They will also discuss implications for policy with the goal of working toward health equity for all rural residents.

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Twitter: @UMNRHRC

Carrie Henning-Smith, PhD, MPH, MSW is an assistant professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health and Deputy Director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center. Dr. Henning-Smith’s research focuses on health equity, with a particular emphasis on rural residents, older adults, and historically marginalized populations. She is a past Fellow of the National Rural Health Association, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Rural Health and Journal of Applied Gerontology.

Twitter: @Carrie_H_S

Ashley Hernandez began working as a graduate research assistant at the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center in August 2018. She is also a PhD candidate in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences focusing on occupational and environmental epidemiology. As an Environmental Health Sciences doctoral candidate, Ashley’s research has focused on occupational health, heart and lung disease outcomes, exposures to air pollutants, farmworker’s children’s health, and anti-bullying research. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Ashley worked in an underserved area of San Antonio, TX as a middle school science teacher.

Twitter: @amherndz

PhD student, Division of Biostatistics

I Choose You, Phthalate Two: A New Method for Variable Selection of Correlated Chemical Exposures
There is a growing demand for statistical methods to determine the effects that chemical mixtures have on human health. The goals of this work are generally two-fold: to estimate the overall effect of a mixture on a particular health outcome while also identifying which mixture components are most harmful, for regulatory purposes. One statistical challenge is identifying true “bad actors” when mixture components are highly correlated. In this presentation, Grace Lynden will propose a new method to solve this problem called Sparse Weighted Sum Regression that is highly accurate in simulations, and apply a method to data from The Infant Development and Environment Study, a national pregnancy cohort study with a focus on phthalates.

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Grace Lyden is a third-year PhD student in the Division of Biostatistics, where she does statistical methods work with Dr. David Vock in variable selection and causal inference. She is a research assistant to Dr. Ruby Nguyen and The Infant Development and Environment Study, and she previously worked for Dr. James Neaton and the PREVAC Ebola vaccine trial. Before biostatistics, Grace studied journalism and piano performance, then worked as a newspaper reporter.

Twitter: @gracelyden
Instagram: @glyden

Mark Pereira, PhD, MPH
Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health

Zachary C. Pope, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Epidemiology & Community Health

Location, Location, Location!: Urban Environments, Exercise, and Health Inequities
Research suggests that nature exposure can have several health benefits versus exposure to highly built environments. Indeed, compared to urban Greenspace (publicly accessible areas with natural elements like trees, grass, water), urban Gray space (areas consisting of paved surfaces, buildings) often exposes individuals to higher air pollution and greater physiological and psychological stress. Unfortunately, individuals of minority and lower socioeconomic status bear the burden of these stressors given the lack of urban Greenspace access. Our research, in individuals with prediabetes residing in metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago, has sought and will seek to use novel methodology to provide the strongest evidence to date on urban Greenspace health benefits. In our presentation, in this presentation, Mark Pereira and Zachary Pope will speak to the importance of our study’s novel methodology and the potential policy-level implications this research may have as it pertains to reducing health disparities.

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Mark Pereira is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health. His research focuses on the cause and epidemiology of type 2 diabetes, which is a costly, debilitating, and prevalent disease, yet it is highly preventable. Dr. Pereira’s interest has long been steeped in the role of physical activity and nutrition in the prevention of type 2 diabetes and related cardiometabolic risk factors. Because of their close relation to type 2 diabetes, his work also involves investigations into obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Zachary Pope is a NHLBI T32 Postdoctoral Fellow within the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health. His research broadly examines/manipulates the environmental (e.g., air pollution, greenspace) and/or behavioral exposures (e.g., PA, diet) influencing cardiometabolic, psychosocial, and cognitive health outcomes in adults with clinical and subclinical disease while paying strict attention to novel physiological intermediates (e.g., the autonomic nervous system, the gut microbiome, etc.) connecting these exposures and outcomes. To date, Zachary has published approximately 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and 10 edited book chapters.

Twitter: @ZachCPope
Instagram: @zachpope7