Stress and Resilience in Lockdown

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Stress and Resilience in Lockdown

Public health measures such as quarantine and stay-at-home orders are important for controlling COVID-19, but they also pose significant new stresses for families and individuals. This panel will discuss new research and perspectives on how people in Durham and surrounding communities are navigating the challenges of the pandemic, including the consequences on mental health, nutrition and family dynamics.

About the speakers:

Sumi Gupta Ariely serves as an Associate Professor of the Practice in Global Health and teaches a variety of courses, including global health research methods and global health ethics. Dr. Ariely holds a PhD in Psychology with a focus on cognitive development and culture. She has international experience with global health issues in a variety of contexts (US, West and East Africa, South and East Asia) and has worked on maternal, child, and adolescent health, and community health development. As a developmental psychologist she is interested in the relations between cultural, social, and biological factors on health behaviors and outcomes.  Recently, she has taken an additional role as faculty lead for DGHI's Durham Research and Service work.  This connects to her and other faculty's long-standing interest in prioritizing the 'Local-is-Global' approach to GH work.

Anna Gassman-Pines is WLF Bass Connections Associate Professor of public policy and psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. She is also Faculty Affiliate of Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy. Gassman-Pines received her BA with distinction in Psychology from Yale University and PhD in Community and Developmental Psychology from New York University. Her research focuses on low-wage work, family life and the effects of welfare and employment policy on child and maternal well-being in low-income families. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and various private foundations.

Carmelita Karhoff is the founding member of Dementia Inclusive Durham (DID), a grassroots volunteer collaborative in Durham County, dedicated to serving as catalyst for enhancing the well-being and quality of life of persons living with dementia. She currently serves as Director of the federally-funded Dementia Inclusive Durham Project whose goal is to promote the work of DID through an inclusive and creative community of care approach within a strengthened dementia-capable system of supports and services. In this capacity she works with all levels of organizations and community sectors to achieve the project goal. For ten years, she also served as Long Term Care Ombudsman for the Triangle J region and Durham County, advocating for the rights of and quality of care for the elderly in long term care homes. In this capacity she also worked on statewide initiatives to address reduction in the unnecessary use of antipsychotics for the elderly, promoted culture change to support person-centered care, and advocated for the use of the arts a healing modality, introducing the Music and Memory Program to long term care homes across Durham and North Carolina. Her many years of experience in hospital administration, leadership and management consulting, and leadership in civic organizations enable her to work collaboratively and effectively with project partners to achieve goals that are critical to optimal well-being of and service outcomes for the elderly.

Megan Lott serves as the Deputy Director for Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based at DGHI. In this role, Megan works closely with Dr. Mary Story to support research on environmental and policy strategies that have strong potential to promote healthy eating among children, especially among racially and ethnically diverse populations at highest risk for poor health and well-being and nutrition-related heath disparities. Megan’s areas of research and policy expertise include federal nutrition policies and programs, child obesity, infant and early childhood nutrition, and beverages. Prior to coming to DGHI, Megan spent 9 years in Washington, D.C. with The Pew Charitable Trusts, the National Farm to School Network, and the Community Food Security Coalition, where she supported nutrition research, policy, and advocacy efforts at the federal and state levels. Megan is a registered dietitian with a BS in nutrition sciences and dietetics from the University of Cincinnati and a Master’s of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Amber Rieder is a recent graduate of McMaster University's Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Graduate Program, in Ontario Canada (2019). Amber is currently a Global Mental Health Postdoctoral Associate at the Duke Global Health Institute and Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, under the mentorship of Dr. Eve Puffer, Dr. Lauren Franz, and Dr. Geraldine Dawson. Amber is interested in accessible approaches to mental health assessment and intervention across diverse settings. Amber's primary research interests are focused on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), intimate partner violence, and intergenerational transmission of risk; psychometric assessment development, validation, and cross-cultural contextualization; and the use of technology-assisted mental health assessment and intervention strategies to improve equity and open access to mental health tools, training, and services. In her role as a postdoc, Amber is working with Dr. Dawson's team on the implementation and evaluation of the SenseToKnow, an app-based screening assessment for early detection of biological risk markers in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Amber is also currently engaged in mixed-method research with both Dr. Puffer and Dr. Franz to evaluate parent-mediated and lay-provider intervention models for the treatment of ASD (Community-Early Start Denver Model; South Africa), to reduce harsh parenting practices (Parents Make the Difference; Liberia), and to improve family problem-solving, communication, and overall wellbeing (Tuka Pamoja; Kenya). Amber is currently co-leading Coping Together, a DHGI-funded initiative that aims to co-develop— in collaboration with child- and family-serving community organizations in the Durham region— a family mental health and wellbeing intervention program that is accessible and can be feasibly implemented in the context of challenging and dynamic COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.