Research - Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Brown School partners with nonprofit on nutrition pilot for cancer patients

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 12:09:00 +0000

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis is partnering with Food Outreach, a St. Louis-based nonprofit, on a two-year pilot project exploring how best to support the nutritional needs of cancer patients as they transition off their medically tailored meal program. The project is co-led by Dan Ferris, associate professor of practice at the Brown School and co-director of policy education and practice at the Center for Social Development, and Sydney Gosik, a Brown School alumna (MPH/MSW ’20) and director of strategic initiatives at Food Outreach. Funding is provided by 17�Թ�-ACCERT, (Washington University Advancing Cancer Control Engaged Research Through Transformative Solutions), an initiative supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Currently, Food Outreach provides clients undergoing cancer treatment...

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Cabassa urges equity in psychedelic therapy during podcast appearance

admin — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 22:58:00 +0000

Leopoldo J. Cabassa, professor at the Brown School and co-founder of 17�Թ�’s Center for Holistic Interdisciplinary Research in Psychedelics (CHIRP), is urging greater focus on equitable access as psychedelic-assisted therapy gains momentum in mainstream mental health care. In a recent episode of the podcast Survival in the Trenches: Life Beyond Loss, Cabassa, who also co-directs the Brown School’s Center for Mental Health Services Research, discussed the promise of psychedelic therapy for conditions like treatment-resistant PTSD, depression, as well as the challenges that could hinder fair and widespread access. A nationally recognized expert in health equity and implementation science, Cabassa emphasized the need to prioritize equitable access from the outset. Without intentional planning, he warned, the treatment could be available only to the privileged. “This is...

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Brown School faculty honored for community-engaged research at Confluence Awards

admin — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:25:47 +0000

Brown School assistant professors Tyriesa L. Howard and Mitra Naseh were recognized for their impactful, community-engaged research during the 2025 William H. Danforth St. Louis Confluence Award Showcase, held April 16. The annual event, hosted by the Confluence Collaborative for Community-Engaged Research, Teaching and Practice, recognized 11 projects from among 58 nominated faculty-community partnerships across 17�Թ�. “All of these projects share a common goal: to deliver tangible, positive outcomes that make St. Louis a more equitable and healthy region,” said Bettina Drake, director of the Confluence Collaborative for Community Engagement. Howard received a 2025 Provost Impact Award for her project, Improving Postpartum Mental Health for NICU Families: Developing and Piloting ‘The Fathers First Initiative’ in Neonatal Healthcare Systems. She shares...

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Faculty members awarded $3 million NIMH grant for HIV prevention in Africa

Roger — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 21:52:53 +0000

Three members of the Washington University in St. Louis faculty have been awarded a $3 million research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to address the economic and structural barriers associated with access and use of an oral medication to prevent HIV infection. The new study called Suubi4PrEP is a multilevel combination intervention focused on oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access, initiation and adherence among 15- to 24-year-old adolescent girls and young women living within HIV hotpots in Uganda. Recipients of the grant are Fred Ssewamala, the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School and director of the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD); Proscovia Nabunya, an assistant professor at the Brown School and co-director of ICHAD;...

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Naseh awarded grant to improve refugee health in Missouri

admin — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:55:20 +0000

Mitra Naseh, an assistant professor at the Brown School, has received a three-year, $463,654 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health to study and improve the health of refugees in Missouri. Naseh’s project, titled “Structural Barriers and Health Outcomes of New Missourians,” will focus on identifying and addressing the challenges refugees face when seeking initial assistance. The goal is to develop and test community-led solutions to improve health outcomes for newly resettled refugees across the state. “The development of this grant is the result of over two years of collaboration and consultation with community partners and refugees in St. Louis,” Naseh said. “I am deeply grateful for the contributions and patience of the refugees, refugee-serving organizations, and community partners I have the...

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Study finds low viral load suppression among refugee youth in refugee settlements in Uganda

Myra — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:57:17 +0000

A recent study has highlighted a concerning lack of viral load suppression (VLS) among refugee youth living in refugee settlements in Uganda. Viral load suppression is considered pivotal in the endeavor to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as individuals with suppressed viral load can live long healthy lives and cannot sexually transmit the disease. However, young people lag in this important metric, and some groups are particularly overlooked. A particularly overlooked group is refugee adolescents and youth, who have been largely neglected in research. This vulnerable population faces unique challenges, including high rates of trauma-related mental health issues, sexual violence, engagement in risky behaviors like substance use, and limited knowledge of HIV. These intersecting factors can impede their adherence to antiretroviral...

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Friedman Center grant to study experiences of ageism

Roger — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:13:45 +0000

The Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at 17�Թ� has received an 18-month $136,000 grant from the RRF Foundation for Aging to study how older adults understand and experience ageism. Ageism is “prevalent, invisible and hurts older people and communities,” said Nancy Morrow-Howell, the Bettie Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Social Policy at the Brown School, who leads the study with center co-director Brian Carpenter, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences. The research team is planning a series of focus groups for the study, “Using Older People’s Understanding of Ageism to Develop Interventions to Combat It.” To expand knowledge about older adults’ experiences with ageism and to help the researchers develop essential elements for an intervention, the...

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NIH funding to build research capacity among refugee youth in Uganda

Natasha — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 14:28:27 +0000

Three Brown School Assistant Professors—Nhial Tutlam, Proscovia Nabunya and Mitra Naseh—have been awarded $150,000 from the Fogarty International Center (FIC) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build research capacity among refugee youth living in refugee settlements in Uganda. The project, titled RCap4Youth: Research Capacity for Refugee Youth, is an administrative supplement to the current ICHAD’s ACHIEVE D43 Training Program led by Fred Ssewamala, the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School and Mary McKay, Vice Provost of Interdisciplinary Initiatives at 17�Թ�. The project will recruit refugee youth residing in refugee settlements in Uganda with the ultimate goal of training a cadre of young people to engage in research focused on addressing health issues faced by vulnerable populations in humanitarian settings. Forcibly displaced...

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Addressing poverty key to better TB and HIV treatment in Uganda

admin — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 14:39:24 +0000

Experts from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis are calling on HIV and tuberculosis researchers in Uganda to focus on combating poverty as a key strategy to improve treatment outcomes for those co-infected with HIV and tuberculosis (TB). In a correspondence published in the August 31 issue of The Lancet, the authors highlight that poverty—a key social determinant of health—drives poor treatment outcomes for both HIV and tuberculosis. In Uganda, for example, many health facilities lack TB treatment services, forcing patients to travel long distances at high costs to access care. “Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV and, despite being curable, is responsible for over one-third of all HIV-related deaths worldwide.1 Uganda is one of...

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Experts Call for “Reimagining” Public Health in the United States

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 21:41:29 +0000

The public health system in the United States needs an immediate “transformation,” two of the nation’s leading health experts write in a new appeal for change driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and the politicization of public health. The essay is the lead article in “Reimagining Public Health,” a new special issue of Health Affairs, one of the nation’s foremost health policy journals. The authors are Ross C. Brownson, the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor at the Brown School and founder of the Prevention Research Center; and Jonathan Samet, a professor and the former dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. “No matter what label we attach to this effort, the past several years have made one thing clear:...

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Effectively Communicating with Local Policymakers 17�Թ� Health Policy

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 16:35:51 +0000

Clear policy briefs and local data are key to communicating with policymakers, according to a recent paper co-authored by Elizabeth Dodson, research assistant professor at the Prevention Research Center (PRC) at the Brown School. Dodson and colleagues on the research team distributed surveys with different versions of policy briefs about obesity to local policymakers on a national panel, asking about their impressions, their likelihood of using the brief and how they determine legislative priorities. Nearly all of the 331 respondents said local data, constituent needs/opinions, and cost-effectiveness data were important or very important to determining what issues they work on. An infographic about the study is available on the PRC website. “We know that evidence-based policies can be an effective...

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17�Թ� Receives Grant to Address Economic Mobility of Black Youth

Roger — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 16:32:30 +0000

Washington University in St. Louis will receive funding for a collaborative community project focused on improving economic mobility for Black youth in the St. Louis area. The university is one of four schools that will share $2.6 million in funding from the William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation and Bezos Family Foundation. 17�Թ�’s share of the Institutional Challenge grant is $650,000 over three years. Mary McKay, vice provost of interdisciplinary initiatives, and Sean Joe, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development, won the grant for their collaborative project “Advancing the Social and Economic Mobility of Black Male Youth and Young Men,” a partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of St. Louis, the Greater St. Louis Foundation...

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Study Looks at Ways to Sustain Public Health Programs

Roger — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 15:26:06 +0000

State tobacco control programs that used a new training model were better able to sustain operations, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. The study, titled “Action planning for building public health program sustainability: results from a group-randomized trial,” was published this month in the journal Implementation Science. “This is the first study to test a training model designed to increase sustainability of public health programs,” said Sarah Moreland-Russell, an associate professor of practice and the study’s first author. The training was most beneficial for programs that had made less progress in implementing tobacco control policy, researchers found, implying that tailored training may be most appropriate for struggling programs. “Public health impact can only...

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Consistent Health Insurance is Critical, Finds New Study

Roger — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 20:48:00 +0000

Inconsistent Medicaid enrollment was associated with a higher risk of death in pediatric cancer patients, according to a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “This paper underscores the importance of continuous access to health care for all children and adolescents,” said Kim Johnson, a professor at the Brown School and first author of “Associations between Medicaid enrollment and diagnosis stage and survival among pediatric cancer patients,” published in January in the journal Pediatric Blood & Cancer. To evaluate Medicaid-associated disparities, Johnson and her co-authors used Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results–Medicaid linked data to examine diagnosis stage and survival disparities in cancer cases diagnosed from birth-19 years old in those who were enrolled in Medicaid, the...

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Steensma: Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Medicine Can Stimulate Change

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 20:32:36 +0000

Does it matter whether pain-management physicians believe in climate change? Joe Steensma thinks so. Steensma, a professor of practice at the Brown School, co-authored two recent studies inspired by students in a class he teaches called “Climate Change and Public Health.” The idea to focus on pain management came from Alexandra Fogarty, a fellow in physiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine who spoke to the class on the subject. Like other fields, the practice of medicine has wasteful ways, some of it invisible and some recognizable. She gave an example of a fairly common practice, epidural injections for pain, that can be especially wasteful. After her presentation, some members of the class expressed interest in helping quantify this...

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