Events | Science Of Behavior Change

Events

I2I Online Seminar with Katie Witkiewitz: Precision medicine approaches to the development and dissemination of treatments for alcohol and substance use disorders

Date: Apr 26, 2019 1:00 PM in Eastern Time

Abstract: There are multiple effective interventions for alcohol and other substance use disorders, however, effect sizes versus control conditions tend to be small. For example, our work has found mindfulness-based interventions to be more efficacious and effective than “gold standard” treatments (cognitive behavioral treatment, 12-step approaches) in the treatment of substance use disorder with small effect sizes. The current presentation will discuss the development and dissemination of mindfulness-based interventions and recent attempts to identify which individuals are most likely to respond best to mindfulness-based interventions based on different phenotypic profiles. The presentation will also highlight similar research in the area of medications for alcohol use disorder and how methodological approaches can be used to phenotype individuals to pursue precision medicine hypotheses. Future directions that include rigorous tests of precision medicine hypotheses and adaptive designs will also be discussed.

Katie Witkiewitz is a Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Scientist at the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions at the University of New Mexico. She has studied mindfulness-based interventions for substance use disorder since 2001. Dr. Witkiewitz also has expertise in quantitative methods and is interested in how the methodology can inform precision medicine for alcohol and other substance use disorders.

Register here.

April 22, 2019 | Michael Otto, PhD Presenting on Context Matters: Internal Context, Distress Intolerance, and the Application of Psychosocial Treatment

Michael W. Otto, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy at Boston University. He has had a major career focus on developing and validating new psychosocial treatments, with a focus on treatment refractory populations including those with anxiety, bipolar, and substance use disorders. His work includes a translational research agenda investigating brain-behavior relationships in therapeutic learning, including the use of novel strategies to improve the consolidation of therapeutic learning. Dr. Otto’s focus on hard-to-treat conditions and principles underlying behavior-change failures led him to an additional focus on health-behavior promotion, including investigations of addictive behaviors, medication adherence, sleep, and exercise. Across these behaviors, he has been concerned with cognitive, attention, and affective factors that derail adaptive behaviors. Dr. Otto has published over 400 articles and over 20 books spanning his research interests, and he Dr. Otto was identified as a “top producer” in the clinical empirical literature, an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, and winner of the 2019 Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Clinical Psychology award from APA Division 12. His past leadership positions include serving as President of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and President of Division 12 of the American Psychological Association.

Calling Info:

Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 616 728

If using phone line for audio/teleconferencing: +1-415-655-0001 and enter the meeting number, once prompted

If using audio from your computer: Once you join the meeting, select? Call Using Computer? to automatically connect

Events

I2I Seminar: Dr. Larry Hawk

Dr. Larry Hawk, University of Buffalo will be leading the first I2I online seminar (http://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/psychology/faculty/faculty-directory/hawk.html) on February 28 from 1 – 2 pm ET. The seminar is entitled “Applying the Ideas to Interventions Framework to Translational Science Questions (and Vice Versa).”

To learn more about the seminar, and to register, please follow this link

February 26, 2019 | Linda Collins PhD Presents: Introduction to the Multiphase Optimization Strategy for Building Better Behavioral and Biobehavioral Interventions

Linda M. Collins, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Human Development & Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, United States. She is also Director of The Methodology Center, an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the advancement and dissemination of quantitative methods for applications in drug abuse prevention and treatment, as well as other areas in the behavioral sciences. Dr. Collins’s research interests include the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), an engineering-inspired methodological framework for optimizing and evaluating behavioral, biobehavioral, and biomedical interventions. The objective of MOST is to improve intervention effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and scalability. Dr. Collins is currently collaborating on research applying MOST to develop optimized behavioral interventions in the areas of smoking cessation, weight loss, prevention of excessive drinking and risky sex in college students, and HIV services. Her research has been funded by NIDA, NCI, NIDDK, and NIAAA.

Calling Info:

Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/joinbynumber

Meeting Number: 191 366 190

Events

March 18, 2019 | Pamela Herd PhD Presents: Social and Population Health Science Approaches to Understanding the Human Gut Microbiome

Event Date: March 18, 2019 at 2pm EST

The microbiome is now considered our “second genome,” with potentially comparable importance to the genome in determining human health. There is, however, a relatively limited understanding of the broader environmental factors, particularly social conditions, that shape variation in human microbial communities. Fulfilling the promise of microbiome research—particularly the microbiome’s potential for modification—will require collaboration between biologists and social and population scientists. For life scientists, the plasticity and adaptiveness of the microbiome calls for an agenda to understand the sensitivity of the microbiome to broader social environments already known to be powerful predictors of morbidity and mortality. For social and population scientists, attention to the microbiome may help elucidate nagging questions as to the underlying biological mechanisms that link social conditions to health. We outline key substantive and methodological advances that can be made if collaborations between social and population health scientists and life scientists are strategically pursued, as well as provide a recent example of just such a collaboration.

December 17, 2018 | Mary Dozier PhD Presents: Defining and Monitoring Intervention Fidelity with Precision in a Home Visitation Model

Mary Dozier is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. She obtained her Ph.D. from Duke University in 1983. She was named the Amy E. DuPont Chair in Child Development in 2007, and in 2016 was named the Francis Alison Professor, the university’s highest faculty honor. Over the last 25 years, she has studied the development of young children in foster care and young children living with neglecting birth parents, examining challenges in attachment and regulatory capabilities. Along with her graduate students and research team, she developed an intervention, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up, that targets specific issues that have been identified as problematic for young children who have experienced adversity. This intervention has been shown to enhance children’s ability to form secure attachments, and to regulate physiology and behavior normatively, among other things. She received the International Congress on Infant Studies’ Translational Research Award in 2018, and has been named the 2019 recipient of the APA Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution in Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.

Calling Information:

Meeting URL: https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=I728DH72P9FZAKMP0FERL7KEW1-D1JL&rnd=628277.25311

Meeting Number: 190 372 314

October 23, 2018 | Karolina Lempert PhD Presents: Experimental Manipulations of Intertemporal Choice: Successes and Limitations

Karolina Lempert, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, affiliated with the Department of Psychology and the Penn Memory Center. She earned her PhD in psychology from New York University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her undergraduate degree is in neurobiology from Harvard University. Dr. Lempert’s research examines the individual differences, situational factors, and neural mechanisms that influence intertemporal choices, or choices with consequences that play out over time. She uses a neuroeconomics approach, combining paradigms from behavioral economics with methodological techniques including neuroimaging and psychophysiology. She is the recipient of a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Aging.

August 20, 2018 | OBSSR Director’s Webinar Presents: Russell Poldrack, Ph.D., on Toward data-driven ontologies for mental function

Time: Monday, August 20, 2018 1:00 pm (EST)
Register for this online only event.

Russell A. Poldrack is the Albert Ray Lang Professor in the Department of Psychology and Professor (by courtesy) of Computer Science at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience. His research uses neuroimaging to understand the brain systems underlying decision making and executive function. His lab is also engaged in the development of neuroinformatics tools to help improve the reproducibility and transparency of neuroscience, including the Openneuro.org and Neurovault.org data sharing projects and the Cognitive Atlas ontology.

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Events

Workshop on Implementation of Digital Health Interventions

The National Cancer Institute (NCI), in collaboration with Cancer Research U.K. (CRUK), will host a “Sandpit” workshop (i.e., ideas lab) on October 28-31, 2018, in Potomac, Maryland.

WORKSHOP BACKGROUND

This intensive residential workshop will bring together a broad, multidisciplinary group of participants to generate new insights on the contextual factors (e.g., social, cultural, and organizational) that influence the implementation and uptake of digital health interventions for cancer prevention. The research ideas generated at the workshop will inform dissemination and implementation efforts, with the ultimate goal of increasing the reach, adoption, and maintained use of digital health tools. On the last day of the workshop, CRUK will invite up to four of the teams formed at the workshop to apply for CRUK seed grants to test the feasibility of their ideas.

Events

14th Annual Pre-Conference Satellite Meeting on Mechanisms of Behavior Change: Transbehavioral Mechanisms and Processes of Change

Members of the SOBC Network will be speaking on Saturday, June 16th from 8:30am-4:00pm at the Hyatt San Diego, CA. Full schedule:

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