Biostatistician and Assistant Professor Mark Fiecas is co-leading a study looking at the emergence of depression and suicide risk in thousands of adolescents and how it relates to the behavior of specific brain regions over time.
Maternal & Child Health
Hardeman receives AcademyHealth’s emerging leader award
Associate Professor Rachel Hardeman received AcademyHealth’s Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award for her reproductive health equity research focusing on how racism creates health inequities.
Slaughter-Acey earns NIH honor for research on racism in maternal health
Assistant Professor Jaime Slaughter-Acey earned a a Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Award for her study “Skin tone matters: Racial microaggression and delayed prenatal care.”
Teens take opportunity to sleep longer when high schools start later
The study led by Associate Professor Rachel Widome showed that teens slept roughly 40 minutes more each night when schools delayed their start times to approximately 8:30 a.m.
Rapid deployment of school-based mental health providers during the COVID-19 crisis
Assistant Professor Susan Mason is leading a study involving school-based mental health providers to test strategies for protecting children’s academic engagement and parent-child mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Minnesotans stay home, risk of domestic and sexual violence grows
Associate Professor Ruby Nguyen is co-leading a study investigating how best to provide sexual and intimate partner/domestic violence services in Minnesota during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kids or teen smokers are less likely to kick the habit as adults
Research led by Professor David Jacobs found that the younger people start smoking, the more likely they are to smoke daily as an adult — even into their 40s — and the harder it will be to quit.
Intuitive eating during teenage years linked to better mental health and eating behaviors in adulthood
Professor Dianne Neumark-Sztainer co-authored a study that showed adolescents who regulated how much they ate based on feelings of hunger and fullness were found to experience less depressive symptoms, low self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, and other related health issues in adulthood.
Increasing community connection could reduce violent encounters between police and young black men
PhD student Collin Calvert led a survey of various stakeholders to learn why they think violent encounters between law enforcement and young black men occur in their communities.
Child participation in organized activities interferes with family meals
The study by researcher Nicole Larson revealed parents who said they experienced moderate to high interference with having family meals also reported lower family meal frequency, greater difficulty scheduling family meals, and more fast-food intake.
Disordered eating in adolescence linked to higher BMI levels in adulthood
Postdoctoral fellow Cynthia Yoon led the study which showed that adolescents who engaged in two or more disordered eating behaviors, such as frequent dieting, had higher BMI levels in adulthood than those who did not use those behaviors.
Researchers call for updates to obesity pregnancy guidelines
Associate Professor Jamie Stang co-wrote a commentary calling for the review of the U.S. guidelines to assure they reflect current research and thinking as well as factor in the diversity of women across the country.
