St. David’s CHPR 21st Annual Conference

Agenda

Speakers

Tiffany C.E. Veinot, MLS, PhD
Associate Dean for Faculty
Professor of Information
School of Information &
Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education
School of Public Health
University of Michigan

Dr. Tiffany Veinot is Associate Dean for Faculty at the University of Michigan (UM)’s School of Information and holds appointments as a Full Professor at the Schools of Information and Public Health at UM. Her research focuses on how health information technologies can be designed and implemented to reduce health disparities and improve the health of marginalized groups through an approach she has termed “community health informatics.” Community health informatics focuses on the use of information systems and services to improve the health of marginalized populations and reduce health disparities. Increasingly, this line of work advances creation and evaluation of meso-level interventions that aim to influence the social conditions from which health disparities emerge.Dr. Veinot has held over $15.5 million in extramural research funding as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator, with funding from PCORI, CDC, and NSF. She is currently PI of a national cluster-randomized controlled trial investigating interventions to prevent complications of hemodialysis care that occur disproportionately among women. She is also co-PI of the CDC’s national Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Surveillance System, and is leading efforts to incorporate data and analyses concerning the social and environmental determinants of health into the system.

Alexa Stuifbergen, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dean & Laura Lee Blanton Chair in Nursing
James R. Dougherty, Jr. Centennial Professor in Nursing
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Alexa Stuifbergen received her PhD in Nursing from The University of Texas at Austin, her MSN from The University of Texas at El Paso, and her BSN from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Dean Stuifbergen has been involved in research related to health promotion for persons with chronic and disabling conditions for more than 30 years. Her center grants and research projects studying health promotion and self-management in adults with chronic disabling conditions (multiple sclerosis, post-polio syndrome, and fibromyalgia) have been funded for over $11.8 million by the National Institute of Nursing Research, the Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health.

Michelle Wright, PhD, RN, FAAN
Assistant Professor
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Michelle Wright holds joint appointments in the School of Nursing and Dell Medical School (Department of Women’s Health). Dr. Wright received her doctorate in 2014 from the University of North Dakota where her research focused on evaluating genome-wide methylation patterns related to health outcomes in pregnant women. She went on to complete postdoctoral study at Virginia Commonwealth University studying methods of evaluating genome-wide DNA methylation and microbiome data; and Yale University studying the influence of intergenerational omics on health disparities. Dr. Wright's research interests are centered on investigating relationships among environmental exposures, the microbiome, and genomic factors to determine how they contribute to health outcomes in human populations.

Julie Zuñiga, PhD, RN, FAAN
Associate Professor
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Julie Zuñiga earned a BA in History from Austin College in Sherman, TX, her MSN and PhD from The University of Texas at Austin, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Zuñiga's research interest includes self-management of stigmatized illnesses in conjunction with co-morbid conditions, with a focus on HIV and diabetes.

Brad Love, PhD
Associate Professor
Moody College of Communication
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Brad Love's work focuses on helping people thrive. At the University of Texas at Austin, he serves as University Distinguished Teaching Professor and an associate professor in the Center for Health Communication, where his projects concentrate on improving quality of life for young adults affected by cancer as well as preventing diagnoses through community interventions. Love's projects have been supported by MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Livestrong Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, among others.

Ashley Hennegan, PhD, RN, FAAN
Assistant Professor
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Ashley Henneghan's clinical experience has focused on alleviating unwanted symptoms and optimizing wellness for persons with chronic diseases. She received her BSN from Pennsylvania State University in 2008, and her MSN (2014) and PhD (2017) from the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing. Before joining the faculty at UT Austin as an Assistant Professor in 2018, she spent a year as a Postdoctoral Fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Henneghan's research focuses on defining and improving cognitive and psychosocial outcomes in cancer survivors which emerge during or after cancer treatment and are troublesome to survivors. She applies biobehavioral and precision health methods to advance knowledge and develop targeted integrative interventions to optimize functioning and quality of life following cancer treatment.

Anton L.V. Avanceña, PhD
Assistant Professor
College of Pharmacy
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Anton Avanceña (he, him) is an Assistant Professor of Health Outcomes and, by courtesy, of Internal Medicine at UT Austin. A decision scientist by training, Anton studies how efficiency and equity in health can be improved. He leverages simulation modeling and economic evaluation techniques, among other methodologies, to understand the value of health technologies, clinical and population-level interventions, and large-scale policies. His recent work has focused on mental and behavioral health, particularly alcohol misuse, though he continues to do research in other clinical areas such as pediatrics, infectious diseases, and oncology. Anton received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar.

Kavita Radhakrishnan, PhD, MSEE, RN, FAAN
Associate Professor and
Director of Luci Baines Johnson and Ian J. Turpin Center for Gerontological Nursing
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Kavita Radhakrishnan received her PhD in Nursing Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a Master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania New Courtland Center for Transitions and Aging. Dr. Radhakrishnan's research applies current and emerging technologies such as telemonitoring, connected sensors, and digital gaming to facilitate chronic disease self-management with the goal of developing affordable and scalable health interventions that enable ‘aging in place’. Her research projects studying digital games for self-management in adults with cardiovascular diseases have been funded for over $6.8 million by the National Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health. Currently she is the Principal Investigator of two R01-funded randomized controlled trials that examines digital gaming and connected sensors to enable self-management behaviors for cardiovascular diseases. These trials aim to address health disparities in heart failure in southern U.S. as well as in hypertension outcomes among Native Americans.

Cara Young, PhD, RN, FNP-C, FAANP, FAAN
Associate Professor
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Cara Young is a family nurse practitioner, nurse researcher, and associate professor at UT Austin School of Nursing. Dr. Young's diverse program of research examines, and seeks to improve, behavioral and psychosocial transitions for vulnerable populations in the first half of the life course. Her primary line of research has focused on improving the mental health of children, adolescents, and young adults through mindfulness-based interventions.

Leticia R. Moczygemba, PharmD, PhD, FAACP, FAPhA
Associate Professor
College of Pharmacy
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Leticia Moczygemba is an Associate Professor in the Health Outcomes Division and Associate Director of the Texas Center for Health Outcomes Research and Education at The University of Texas College of Pharmacy. Her research program focuses on working with communities and health systems to mitigate health inequities by developing and testing multi-level interventions to optimize health outcomes. Guided by the principles of community-engaged research, she routinely uses qualitative and quantitative techniques to tailor interventions using end-user input and feedback. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a 5-year, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded grant that aims to refine and test a community-based mHealth intervention, comprised of GPS and text messaging components, with a goal of decreasing emergency department use and hospitalizations among people experiencing homelessness.

Hyekyun Rhee, PhD, RN, FAAN
Professor
School of Nursing
The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Hyekyun Rhee has established a robust research program focused specifically on asthma in adolescents based on several large clinical trials supported by the NIH. Specifically, her focus has been on developing and evaluating innovative asthma self-management interventions that capitalize on unique developmental opportunities presented by adolescents and cutting-edge technologies that can ameliorate the burdens of the disease. For example, she has developed an automated device for asthma monitoring (ADAM) for adolescents using application of an advanced signal processing technology, which has been patented in the U.S. as a Respiratory Disease Monitoring System. Since then, the device has been successfully launched as a consumer device. She is currently leading a development of two exciting technology-based asthma management aids with collaborators at UT Austin.

Posters