Congratulations to Cycle 5 C3EN Pilot Awardees Emma Brett, Michael Gottlieb, Lauren Harriett, Marcia Tan, and En-Ling Wu!
C3EN Pilot Awardees receive up to $60,000 in funding to obtain data to establish an NIH-funded program of health disparities research. Awardees also receive mentorship from experienced investigators in the C3EN Investigator Development Core and access to the research infrastructure at both University of Chicago and Rush University Medical Center. Learn more about Pilot Awardees and their projects HERE.
Emma Brett, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago
Enhancing the implementation of tobacco treatment: A community-responsive approach
Emma Brett is a licensed clinical psychologist. She received her PhD in clinical psychology with a focus on health psychology from Oklahoma State University. She then completed a NIDA-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago before receiving an NIH K99/R00 to develop and test a mobile health intervention for vaping+tobacco use in young adults. Her broader research focuses on enhancing the reach and effectiveness of behavioral and pharmacological interventions for tobacco use, substance use disorders, and related concerns with an emphasis on populations who experience cancer health disparities.
Innovations in tobacco treatment, such as “rolling enrollment” group models and telehealth, can enhance its reach, but community behavioral health sites face many challenges to employing such approaches. The current investigation, in partnership with the Respiratory Health Association, will develop a community advisory board and use mixed methods to determine barriers and facilitators of tobacco treatment innovations at community behavioral health sites. The study will then pilot a tailored cessation treatment based on these findings over the course of three months.
Michael Gottlieb, MD, RDMS, Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Rush University Medical Center
Combating Health Disparities Using Bedside Imaging and Community Health Workers for Early Screening and Referral of Pre-symptomatic Stage B Heart Failure in the Emergency Department
Michael Gottlieb is the Vice Chair of Research and Director of the Emergency Ultrasound Division at Rush University Medical Center. He has served as the founding Program Director for the Rush Clinical Ultrasound Fellowship, as well as Past-Chair of the ACEP Ultrasound Section, AAEM Ultrasound Section, CORD Academy for Scholarship, SAEM Education Summit, CORD Education Committee, and CORD Best Practices Subcommittee. He co-created the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM) Faculty Incubator and is the Director of Learner Assessment and Program Evaluation for the SAEM Advanced Research Methodology Evaluation and Design in Medical Education program. His academic interests include medical education, ultrasound, infectious diseases, heart failure, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Heart failure is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, with worse outcomes among females and Black people. Early intervention at the pre-symptomatic stage can prevent progression to more severe disease, improving quality of life and reducing mortality. This study will assess the use of an educational intervention with, versus without, point-of-care ultrasound to engage and empower patients with risk factors to reduce progression to heart failure. Key outcomes of this study will include follow up rates, lifestyle changes (diet and exercise), and self-motivation and self-efficacy.
Lauren Harriett, DO, MBA, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, University of Chicago
Addressing Unmet Postpartum and Interconception Needs on Chicago’s South Side: Patient and Birth Worker Perspectives
Lauren Harriett (she/her) has a clinical background in full-spectrum community-based primary care. Her research centers patient and community voices to address reproductive health disparities and health care access.
This study, co-designed with a doula as part of the research team, seeks to assess postpartum care on Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs to identify gaps and opportunities to optimize return to primary care. We will analyze patient and system-level factors influencing primary care engagement by characterizing the distribution by demographics and chronic conditions and assessing the disparity of Black postpartum individuals to yield a geographical landscape of the current health system. We have partnered with Our Mothers’ Light, a local doula organization, to co-design a local needs assessment, integrating insights from postpartum patients and birth workers through focus groups on return to primary care services to improve health outcomes and reduce disparities.
Marcia Tan, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago
Developing a train-the-trainer model for a tobacco cessation facilitator curriculum tailored to community health workers
Marcia Tan is the Assistant Director for Community Outreach and Engagement in the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is a licensed clinical health psychologist with a background in epidemiology, and her work focuses on health disparities in modifiable cancer risk factors, including tobacco use and weight gain, and cancer prevention among underserved populations. Dr. Tan’s specific research interests are 1) examining biopsychosocial and behavioral factors that contribute to disparities in cancer, and 2) conducting community-based health behavior interventions to reduce risk factors among underserved populations. She received a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Miami, an MPH from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and a BS in Psychology from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She completed postdoctoral training at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine as an NCI T32 fellow in Cancer Prevention and Control.
Communities with low socioeconomic position or status (SES) carry the greatest burden from commercial tobacco use, and community health workers (CHWs), who are frontline public health workers and trusted members of the communities in which they serve, are well-positioned to engage persons with low SES outside of traditional healthcare settings to intervene on tobacco use directly. Therefore, we have developed C.H.A.N.G.E., an evidence-based curriculum for brief tobacco cessation counseling that is adapted to the CHW flexible care model, and have found that it is effective in increasing CHW knowledge and readiness to deliver tobacco cessation brief counseling. In partnership with CHWs at Sinai Urban Health Institute, the objective of this project is to develop and test the effectiveness of a CHW-specific Train-the-Trainer instructor program for C.H.A.N.G.E. to increase the sustainability of tobacco cessation trainings for CHWs in community-based settings.
En-Ling Wu, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Infectious Diseases & Global Health, University of Chicago
Adapting a Status-Neutral Dynamic Choice Model for New Arrivals
En-Ling Wu (she/her) is an infectious diseases provider at Chicago Family Health Center. Her clinical and research interests focus on the integration of HIV/STI prevention and care using a syndemics approach in community settings. She earned BA degrees in biology and public policy from Brown University and received an MD from the University of Michigan Medical School. She completed her residency, as well as clinical and postdoctoral fellowships in infectious disease, at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University. She also completed an MS in clinical investigation at Northwestern University.
New arrivals to the United States may benefit from HIV screening, discussion of HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), and antiretroviral (ART) initiation or reinitiation during health screenings; however, they face many barriers to PrEP, PEP, and ART access at the service- and system-levels. In the setting of stress and uncertainty, a person-centered Dynamic Choice Model (DCM) that offers structured choices including choice of product may increase PrEP, PEP, or ART uptake compared to usual care. Together with Chicago House and CommunityHealth, we will use a mixed methods approach to assess and adapt a DCM prevention and care intervention and evaluate implementation and clinical outcomes during the pilot period.