The competitions are announced during the fall semester of each year, with letters of intent to apply due in December and final applications for these awards due in early February. (For more details about the seed grant categories and application process, please visit the Seed Grants and Awards page).

In March, 2013, the Principal/New Investigator Review Committee awarded one $15,000 grant to a CHIP PI and three $7,500 grants to New CHIP Investigators:

CHIP PI Leslie Snyder (Ph.D., Communication) for a grant proposal entitled, “Development and Pilot Test of a Virtual Coach App on Weight Loss and Maintenance.”

CHIP Affiliate Kari Adamsons (Ph.D., Human Development & Family Studies) for a grant proposal entitled, “Supporting Fathers during the Prenatal Period to Improve Family Health Outcomes.”

CHIP Affiliate Tania B. Huedo-Medina (Ph.D., Allied Health Sciences) for a grant proposal entitled, “Measurement Challenging Conducting Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis: A Metric Transformation.”

CHIP Affiliate Amy R. Mobley (Ph.D., Nutritional Sciences) for a grant proposal entitled, “The Forgotten Parent: Paternal Influences on Young Children’s Eating Behaviors.”

In March 2013, the Pilot Projects for Graduate Students Review Committee funded four $1,500 seed grants for each of the following CHIP graduate student affiliates:

Megan Clarke (Psychology) for a proposal entitled, “The Impact of Infant Sleep on Maternal Health Behaviors.”

Evan Johnson (Kinesiology) for a proposal entitled, “Two Methods of Running Intensity Prescription and Related Lipid Response.”

Laramie Smith (Psychology) for a proposal entitled, “60 Minutes for Health”: A Theory-based Intervention for People Living with HIV.”

Emily Tuthill (Nursing) for a proposal entitled, “Translation and Testing Content Validity of the IIFAS for Use in South Africa.”

Brief descriptions of each of these new seed grant projects are below:

CHIP PI Leslie Snyder (Ph.D., Communication), “Development and Pilot Test of a Virtual Coach App on Weight Loss and Maintenance”

Dr. Snyder and co-investigators CHIP PI Amy Gorin (Ph.D., Psychology) and CHIP Advanced Interactive Technology Center (AITC) Director Timothy Gifford will use their CHIP PI seed grant funding to develop a virtual health coach application (app) and test the feasibility of using the app, along with existing consumer-based, self-monitoring tools, to promote weight loss in adults. Specific aims for the seed grant include: (1) developing a working model of a theory-based, engaging virtual coach weight-loss app that will take individuals through a tailored intervention to promote a healthy diet, physical activity, weight loss, and maintenance of weight loss, (2) exploring factors related to adherence to daily self-monitoring of diet and physical activity, energy balance, and weight using widely-available consumer technologies, (3) testing the feasibility of an intervention based on the app in combination with self-monitoring in a small sample of ethnically-diverse overweight adults and adults looking to maintain recent weight loss, and (4) exploring issues related to future improvements in the intervention and potential means of its dissemination. The pilot data and beta version of the app generated by the CHIP PI seed grant will be used to support an NIH grant application aimed at the prevention and treatment of overweight status in adults.

CHIP Affiliate Kari Adamsons (Ph.D., Human Development & Family Studies), “Supporting Fathers during the Prenatal Period to Improve Family Health Outcomes.”

Dr. Adamsons will use her New Investigator seed grant to conduct and evaluate a pilot program to increase pre- and post-natal involvement of soon-to-be fathers, with the ultimate goal of improving expectant mother and fetal health and child health after birth. The pilot program will promote parenting knowledge and skills, promote the importance of fathers’ role both during pregnancy and after birth, and provide social support from other fathers. The program will be part of a short-term longitudinal study. Fathers will be recruited between three and six months into the pregnancy (allowing for completion of the program before the birth of the child). Fathers will be randomized into either the treatment group or services-as-usual group. All fathers will be given a set of pre-test measures to assess prenatal care usage, health, and parenting knowledge. Programs will last for eight weeks, meeting once every other week for 1 1/2 hours. After program completion and again at child age 3 and 6 months, both groups of fathers will be given surveys. Groups will be compared on involvement, efficacy, and health outcomes both pre- and post-natally. It is anticipated that promoting fathers’ competence and increasing fathers’ investment in parenting will increase fathers’ involvement pre- and post-natally, resulting in health benefits such as mothers’ increased prenatal care and abstinence from alcohol/smoking, decreased low birth weight and pre-term babies, and lower infant mortality. Father involvement also is associated with psychological, cognitive, social, behavioral, and health benefits for children.

CHIP PI Tania B. Huedo-Medina (Ph.D., Allied Health Sciences), “Measurement Challenging Conducting Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis: A Metric Transformation”

The New Investigator seed grant-funded work of Dr. Huedo-Medina ultimately may benefit other CHIP investigators who are using meta-analysis, a methodological strength of CHIP’s, in their research. The reanalysis of studies’ individual-level data has been recognized as the gold standard for combining evidence from existing studies. Individual participant data meta-analysis makes it possible to use advanced modeling strategies to examine links and complexity between behavioral and biological variables among diverse populations. However, precise metric transformations among factors that presume to measure the same variable are needed. Dr. Huedo-Medina’s team will identify approaches to statistical harmonization, which could be used when individual participant data from different sources are integrated. Although statistical methods for harmonization have been proposed, there has not been a comparison of effect sizes when they are used and no transformation metric has been suggested. The research team will review the statistical developments to combine different measures when complex concepts, such as behavior change on HIV prevention or adherence to treatment, are measured by individual items or scales. As the project progresses, Dr. Huedo-Medina and her team will document their work in scholarly journals in addition to writing guidelines for practitioners and scholars.

CHIP Affiliate Amy R. Mobley (Ph.D., Nutritional Sciences), “The Forgotten Parent: Paternal Influences on Young Children’s Eating Behaviors”

Dr. Mobley and co-investigators Dr. Adamsons and Dr. Gorin will research and provide insight into paternal influences on child eating behaviors, diet quality, physical activity, and weight. The New Investigator seed grant will provide the resources to conduct one-on-one interviews with up to 150 fathers of preschool-age children. These formative results will be used to develop and evaluate effective childhood obesity prevention programs using parents as the agents of change with focused inclusion of the father. Specifically, the overall aims are: (1) identifying the relationship of paternal feeding practices and feeding styles on child eating style, diet quality, and weight status, (2) evaluating the relationship between paternal diet quality, physical activity, and weight status on the diet quality, physical activity, and weight status of their preschool age children, and (3) evaluating the influence of father-reported maternal and paternal perceptions of the role of the father on his preschool child’s feeding practices, diet quality, and body weight. The research team notes that the parent of a young child is a key player in the child’s weight status due to genetic influences on weight as well as the food environment they provide and the feeding process they employ with the child. However, most of the research surrounding modifiable factors associated with child obesity, such as diet, physical activity, and feeding practices, has been one-sided, often ignoring the father of the child. Their research attempts to correct that deficit.

Megan Clarke (Psychology), “The impact of infant sleep on maternal health behaviors”

Under the guidance of Dr. Gorin, Psychology doctoral student Megan Clarke will collect quantitative data regarding infant sleep patterns, parents’ use of sleep training, and maternal psychosocial health and physical activity levels. Clarke’s hypothesis is that mothers who sleep train their infants will sleep more, have lower levels of postpartum depression (PPD), and engage in more physical activity. Data collected from this pilot study potentially could establish a relationship between infant sleep training, maternal physical activity levels, and postpartum weight loss. Clarke ultimately could use her pilot data to inform the development of an intervention designed to support mothers in behavioral sleep training of infants and in increasing their postpartum physical activity levels. This work could be significant because it would provide a targeted approach for a high-risk time for weight gain for women of childbearing age – during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Evan Johnson (Kinesiology), “Two methods of running intensity prescription and related lipid response”

Under the guidance of Kinesiology Professor Lawrence Armstrong, CHIP PI Linda Pescatello (Ph.D., Kinesiology), and Kinesiology Assistant Professor Elaine Choung-Hee Lee, Kinesiology doctoral student Evan Johnson will compare two methods of exercise intensity prescription during a six-week run training program. Of the four components of aerobic exercise prescription (frequency, intensity, duration, and type) outlined by the American College of Sports Medicine, intensity presents the greatest challenge to exercise prescription. Johnson’s study will involve two groups undergoing run training programs, identical except for the method in which running intensity is prescribed. The first group will have exercise intensity prescribed via heart rate (HR), corresponding to specific percentages of peak oxygen uptake, while the second group will have intensity prescribed via the psycho-physiological rating of perceived exertion (RPE), corresponding to the same percentages of peak oxygen uptake. Additionally, run performance and cardio-metabolic risk factors will be measured before and after the six week run training program to determine if differences in intensity prescription manifest in differences in exercise performance and/or health outcomes. Johnson hypothesizes that the group with intensity prescribed via HR will match more closely the target intensities than the group with intensity prescribed via RPE, a finding that can be used in performance and clinical settings to optimally prescribe exercise.

Laramie Smith (Psychology), “‘60 Minutes for Health’: A theory-based intervention for people living with HIV”

Under the guidance of CHIP Director Jeffrey Fisher (Ph.D., Psychology) and CHIP PI K. Rivet Amico (Ph.D., CHIP), Psychology doctoral student Laramie Smith will evaluate a theory-based, single-session, 60-minute intervention to strengthen retention in HIV medical care over a six-month period among HIV-positive patients with a recent history of poor retention in care in the Bronx. Improving retention in HIV care is critical to ensuring optimal long-term health of people living with HIV. Successful interventions supporting sustained retention in HIV care additionally should ensure the significant reduction of HIV-disease burden and HIV-viral load, responsible for most HIV transmission in the U.S. The retention in care interventions evaluated to date have targeted structural or social drivers of access to care vs. individual-level determinants of care utilization. They also have failed to provide an appropriate control condition for testing intervention efficacy. Smith, by contrast, will focus on individual-level determinants of care utilization and use a randomized, controlled study design. Her proof-of-concept study aims to evaluate the intervention’s efficacy in: (1) improving retention to patients’ next few clinic visits over a six-month period, (2) promoting change in the individual-level, theory-based determinants of retention in care, and (3) testing if changes in behavioral determinants predict changes in retention in care behavior at six months.

Emily Tuthill (Nursing), “Translation and Testing Content Validity of the IIFAS for use in South Africa.”

Under the guidance of Dr. Fisher, Nursing doctoral student Emily Tuthill will use her CHIP seed grant funding to conduct work that is vital to the successful completion of her NIH National Research Service Award (NRSA) project, yet unfunded by the NRSA award. Through her NRSA, Tuthill seeks to change the predominantly non-exclusive breastfeeding behavior of HIV+ South African women, with the ultimate goal of reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission. With her CHIP seed grant funding, Tuthill will employ bilingual translators to have the validated Iowa Infant Feeding Attitudes Scale (IIFAS) translated into isiZulu and back-translated. Tuthill also will have content experts evaluate the cultural understandability, clarity, and fit of the tool and will make modifications to ensure a culturally-adapted tool. The resulting culturally-adapted instrument will effectively measure Tuthill’s target constructs in the NRSA project (intention towards exclusive breastfeeding, information, motivation and behavioral skills).

http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2013/05/two-faculty-named-2013-board-of-trustees-distinguished-professors/

How many years have you worked at CHIP/ UConn? This is my 37^th year at UConn and my 3^rd year at CHIP.

What are your primary responsibilities? I work for CHIP Grants Manager Vasinee Long, assisting her with grant budget projections, quarterly effort reporting, and other projects as needed.

What is your favorite part of working at CHIP?  I enjoy the work that I do, the people with whom I work, and the atmosphere at CHIP.

Please share a little bit about your professional life before CHIP. For 26 years, I was in the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences where I worked my way up from Secretary to Program Coordinator.  When Biobehavioral Sciences was incorporated into the Department of Psychology, I assumed the role of Grants Manager there for six years.  While I worked with the faculty and graduate students in Psychology, they became the department bringing in the most annual grant funding on campus. In 2002, I transferred to the Office for Sponsored Research (OSP), where I served as a Grants Specialist in the Pre-Award Division, working with University faculty and graduate students to prepare and submit grant applications.  I formally retired from UConn after 33 years of service in 2003.  After retirement, I continued working for OSP as a Grants Specialist for one year before coming to CHIP in 2004, where I served as the Grants Manager until 2005. After a hiatus of six years, I returned to CHIP in January 2012.

What is your favorite place or event on campus, or your favorite Huskies Team?  I enjoy walking on campus and the new restaurants and stores at Downtown Storrs.

What are we most likely to find you doing when you are not at work?   I like to travel, attend musicals and plays, bowl in several leagues, eat out with friends and relatives, and take walks on campus.

The lecture will be in Video Conference Room 204 on the second floor of Ryan at 2006 Hillside Road at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.  For a map of the area, look at http://www.chip.uconn.edu/about/directions-to-chip/.

You can also view this talk streamed live during or after the lecture at the following link: http://www.chip.uconn.edu/lecture-5-2-13.

Lynn Miller Ph.D. is Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Psychology at USC specializing in understanding the dynamics of persons and situations impacting behavior.  With over 74 publications, she is/was PI on grants (i.e., NIMH, NIAID, CDC, UARP), mostly involving HIV prevention, totaling over $11M and a Co-PI/senior scientist on grants exceeding an additional $2M. Starting in 1990 when she received her first grant to develop and test interactive interventions to prevent HIV, she has been using new technologies to understand and change risky sexual behavior for at-risk populations. She is currently PI (Co-PI: S. Read, P. Appleby, S. Marsella, & L. Clark), of an NIMH R01 grant entitled, SOLVE IT- Real Risk Reduction for MSM. The team developed and is testing a longitudinal intervention designed to challenge and change more automatic and deliberative risky decision-making and behavior using intelligent agents (with realistic goals, beliefs, actions, and “theory of mind”) within a gaming environment that simulates “real life.” It was delivered nationally “on line” and follow-up tests are currently being completed on-line. She also explores how evolutionary processes, including attachment processes, may underlie sexual behavior, and has leveraged some of that work in developing and using theoretically and biologically inspired computational methods to test dynamic models of personality and social behavior.

In another current grant funded by NIDA (PI: Stephen Read; Co-PI Lynn Miller) the brain patterns (using fMRI) of different groups of MSM while playing the SOLVE game can be compared (how do differentially at-risk MSM respond to risk situations in the game) and those patterns can be related to Read and Miller’s biologically inspired computational models of the users. Additional interdisciplinary projects with Stephen Read and military/corporate collaborators include: (a) the development of biologically-inspired social computational models/cognitive architectures for intelligent agents with personality and emotion (for games), (b) applications that test/use intelligent agents for individual, military, and organizational decision-making (funded by NPRST/Dept. of Navy), and (c) applications that test/use intelligent agents with biologically inspired personality and emotions for robotics applications (funded by ONR/Dept. of Navy).

Recipient of a series of awards and honors (e.g., Gerald R. Miller Early Career Award from the International Network of Personal Relationships; Provost’s Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at USC; Recipient of two interdisciplinary grants at USC with Jerry Mendel that fostered breakthroughs, such as Fuzzy Logic II, in engineering), she was PI on i-SOLVE (Socially Optimized Learning in Virtual Environments), a finalist interdisciplinary team proposal for an NSF Science of Learning Center, and has been an invited speaker, consultant, and/or panelist for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense (NPRST), Department of Homeland Security, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Autism Speaks, the world’s leading autism science and advocacy organization, recently awarded CHIP Principal Investigator (PI) Anjana Bhat a grant to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a novel music-based intervention for children with autism.

Dr. Bhat, an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology in UConn’s Neag School of Education and a pediatric physical therapist, will use the two-year, $120,000 pilot treatment grant to design and test an intervention to improve the motor, social, and communication skills of low- to moderate-functioning children with autism between the ages of 3 and 14.

The grant is especially significant because there is little to no evidence on the effectiveness of music-based interventions for children with autism, despite the growing popularity of such interventions in recent years, Dr. Bhat said. Additionally, none of the existing music-based interventions for children with autism incorporate movement activities, which are often impaired, and none of the music interventions are offered more than once or twice a week, which is not often enough for this population to truly benefit, she said.

“Children with autism have great difficulty coordinating complex movements such as planning to dress or tie their shoe laces or dribble a ball due to the abnormalities affecting long-range communication between brain areas,” Dr. Bhat explained. “Movement-based activities within the music-based intervention address these difficulties.”

Most children with autism enjoy music, Dr. Bhat said. In fact, two of Dr. Bhat’s colleagues in autism research at UConn, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology Deborah Fein and Associate Professor of Psychology Inge-Marie Eigsti, have documented that children with autism have enhanced musical abilities, such as pitch perception.

“Embedding an intervention in a music class should make it more appealing to children with autism,” Dr. Bhat said. “We will be addressing impairments of a child with autism within a non-intimidating, enjoyable context.”

The intervention, which Dr. Bhat is developing in collaboration with Associate Professor of Music Linda Neelly, who has joint appointments in UConn’s School of Fine Arts and the Neag School of Education, will include a hello song, beat keeping activities, music making with different instruments, whole body movements, such as marching, and a calming, farewell song.

The study will involve 24 children with autism, half of whom will receive the music-based movement intervention and half of whom will be assigned to a control group.

Children in the intervention arm will attend two sessions a week led by an expert trainer in a classroom setting and three sessions a week led by a parent or caregiver at home.

“Having the parents supplement the intervention at home will enhance its likelihood of success, because children with autism need repeated practice to master new skills,” Dr. Bhat said.

Parents will receive a training manual and a CD with all of the songs to use at home. They will keep diaries tracking the sessions they conduct at home and will be required to conduct at least 75 percent of the recommended sessions to participate in the study, Dr. Bhat explained.

Dr. Bhat’s team will match the level of parent training (and other factors, including the severity of the disorder and other therapies being received) when comparing results. The research team also will video tape some of the parent-led sessions and evaluate for fidelity of the training protocol. For instance, researchers will look for parents to make a certain number of bids for social interaction per session.

Twenty families with children with autism already have been recruited to participate in the study, Dr. Bhat said, and the parents are very motivated to participate because they believe their children will enjoy and respond to this type of intervention.

The intervention includes 40 sessions total and takes 8 weeks. Pre-test measures the first week and post-test measures the final week will include standardized tests of participants’ Joint Attention (JA), turn taking, imitation, praxis, coordination, and balance. The research team will obtain video data during pre- and post-test of synchrony during walking, marching, clapping, and drumming motions, and the researchers also will use eye tracking equipment – bands on participating children’s foreheads that record to backpacks with camcorders in them – to show the focus of the participants’ attention.

Dr. Bhat expects children in the intervention arm will demonstrate improved social performance, such as rates of JA bids, rates of turn taking, and duration of verbalization, as well as improved motor performance, such as rhythmic action praxis, motor coordination, and movement synchrony with the other participants.

“Music-based interventions for children with autism are being used but, due to lack of evidence for their effectiveness, they are still not considered within the standard of care and they are not typically covered by insurance,” Dr. Bhat said. “We are hoping to develop and document an effective music-based movement intervention and ultimately bring it into the mainstream so that it is made more readily available to children with autism who could benefit from them.”

The lecture will be in Video Conference Room 204 on the second floor of Ryan at 2006 Hillside Road at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.  For a map of the area, look at http://www.chip.uconn.edu/about/directions-to-chip/.   It is co-sponsored by the UConn Office of the Vice President for Research.

You can also view this talk streamed live during or after the lecture at the following link: http://www.chip.uconn.edu/lecture-4-25-13.

Annette L. Stanton, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry/Bio-behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, senior research scientist at the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, and a member of the Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research in the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.  Her research centers on specifying factors that promote psychological and physical health in individuals who confront health-related adversity, including cancer, infertility, and other medical conditions.  She is particularly interested in specifying the conditions under which specific coping processes promote or hinder health and well-being.  In the area of psychosocial oncology, she conducts longitudinal research to understand the influences of personality and contextual resources, cognitive appraisals, and coping processes on the quality of life and health in individuals diagnosed with or at risk for a range of cancers, including cancer of the breast, eye, lung, and prostate.  She then works to translate her findings into effective interventions for individuals living with cancer through conducting randomized, controlled intervention trials of psychosocial interventions.  In 2003, Dr. Stanton received the Senior Investigator Award from Division 38 (Health Psychology) of the American Psychological Association in recognition of her research contributions to health psychology.  Currently, she serves as President of Division 38.  She has received a number of awards for undergraduate teaching and graduate mentoring.  In 2006, Professor Stanton was honored with both the J. Arthur Woodward Graduate Mentoring Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award in the UCLA Department of Psychology.  Current funding for her research is provided by the National Cancer Institute and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Professor of Health Promotion and Allied Health Sciences at UConn on “Worksite Weight Loss Intervention Using Contingency Management of Financial Incentives for Risky Employees.”  This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Kinesiology at the NEAG School of Education.

The lecture will be in Video Conference Room 204 on the second floor of Ryan at 2006 Hillside Road at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.  For a map of the area, look at http://www.chip.uconn.edu/about/directions-to-chip/.   It is co-sponsored by the UConn Office of the Vice President for Research.

You can also view this talk streamed live during or after the lecture at the following link: http://www.chip.uconn.edu/lecture-4-18-13.

Dr. Pouran Faghri is a medical doctor and an exercise physiologist with expertise in health promotion, wellness, disease, and disability prevention for healthy individuals as well as neurologically impaired and those with chronic conditions and elderly. Dr. Faghri’s areas of interest are: work-site health promotion programs (design/intervention/evaluation), community health promotion programs (design/intervention/evaluation), health related behavior, intervention strategies, health promotion and secondary disability prevention (neuromuscular, musculoskeletal, and physiological) in disabled and elderly populations, and evaluation of social determinant of health, self-care, self-awareness, and decision making strategies under uncertain or distributed environments.

The lecture will be in Video Conference Room 204 on the second floor of Ryan at 2006 Hillside Road at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.  For a map of the area, look at http://www.chip.uconn.edu/about/directions-to-chip/

You can also view this talk streamed live during or after the lecture at the following link: http://www.chip.uconn.edu/lecture-4-11-13.

Carolyn Aldwin is a professor of Human Development and Family Sciences in the School of Social and Behavioral Health, College of Public Health and Human Sciences, at Oregon State University.  She received her doctorate in Adult Development and Aging from the University of California, San Francisco. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, as well as both Divisions 20 (Adult Development and Aging) and 38 (Health Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, and recently received the Developmental Health Psychology Award from those divisions.  She is currently Past President of Division 20.  Professor Aldwin is editor of Research in Human Development, a multidisciplinary journal, and has authored or edited five books, including: Health, Illness, and Optimal Aging, 2^nd ed. (Springer), Stress, Coping, and Development, 2^nd ed. (Guilford), and the Handbook of Health Psychology and Aging (Guilford).  She has authored or co-authored nearly 100 other publications on stress, coping, health, and optimal aging. She currently has funding from NIA, NSF, and the Templeton Foundation to examine factors promoting vulnerability and resilience in late life.

Donna, a Program Assistant I, began working at CHIP in April 2011. Donna provides administrative support to CHIP Director Jeffrey Fisher and also provides critical administrative and programmatic support for the entire Center. Donna compiles data from many sources in order to produce reports for the Director, for other University administrators and departments, as requested, and for the CHIP Annual Report.  Donna manages CHIP’s conference and interview room scheduling and the sign-out of computers and telecommunications equipment and she helps coordinate the maintenance of the physical facilities.  Donna also assists the administrative team by processing student payroll, creating monthly CHIP Advanced Interactive Technology Center invoices, and tracking monthly telephone expenses.

In addition, Donna recently began assisting the CHIP IT Department with updating the CHIP website, including the directory and bio page listings, newly-awarded grant announcements, the Lecture Series, and research-related pages.  She also has been assisting with creating and modifying interactive CHIP forms.

Thank you, Donna, for your many contributions to CHIP!