Principal Investigator: Dina T. Garcia, PhD

Funding Source: National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)

Project Summary: Latinx/a/o people are the largest ethnoracial minoritized group in the United States and face considerable disparities in oral health, particularly among its adult population. This study will examine how immigration policy vulnerability affects the clinical and self-reported oral health of Latinx/o/a adults. These findings will expand our understanding of how structural racialization via immigration policy shapes the oral health of Latinx/a/o immigrants and their U.S. born co-ethnics.

Principal Investigator: Katherine Y. Tossas, PhD

Funding Source: National Cancer Institute

Project Summary: This award proposes a multi-omic systems biology approach to elucidate the roles of the vaginal microbiome and psychological stress in progression of precancerous cervical lesions to cancer, notably, in the known disparities between Black and White women. The study will provide targeted bioinformatic, statistical and molecular biology training to analyze microbiome and stress experience data, using an integrative systems biology framework to inform future clinically relevant prognostic biomarkers, risk stratification protocols, and interventions to intercept cervical cancer development.

Multiple Principal Investigators: Jessica G. LaRose, PhD, Bernard Fuemmeler, PhD

Funding Source: National Cancer Institute

Project Summary: This is an academic-public partnership between an interdisciplinary team of investigators from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Virginia’s U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-administered income-based housing communities. The overarching goal of the VA-ACCERT Center is to improve dissemination and implementation of health promotion and cancer prevention programming within income-based communities and across the state to close the unjust gaps in cancer-related health outcomes among marginalized populations.

Co-Principal Investigator: Sunny Jung Kim, Ph.D., M.S., M.A.

Funding Source: National Science Foundation

Project Summary: The MAVEN project addresses the global health threat of vaccine inequity in the fight against emerging infectious diseases. Our objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of vaccination coverage and identify key drivers of vaccine uptake. We aim to (1) develop a general framework of vaccine uptake that incorporates individual, social, and structural factors by analyzing a variety of secondary datasets; (2) collect primary survey data and use the framework to develop universal vaccine uptake (as well as vaccine refusal) models that are broadly applicable to infection diseases (e.g., HPV, COVID-19, mpox, flu) and future outbreaks; and (3) develop an epi-model to conduct retrospective and prospective vaccine acceptance and hesitance/refusal models. Findings will help reduce the risk of future pandemics by enabling targeted interventions to increase vaccine acceptance among vulnerable populations, in particular racial/ethnic/sexual minority and rural populations. The research will also help address vaccine inequities in the United States that are currently disproportionately affecting minority subgroups and clinical subpopulations. Ultimately, this research will have implications for public health policy and practice, contributing to the global effort to predict and mitigate the impacts of pandemics.  

Principal Investigator: Katherine Y. Tossas, Ph.D.

The SACRED WOMB Projects consist of a series of research initiatives that investigate multiple layers of the relationship between the microbiome and precancerous cervical lesions.

Project 1
Funding Source: American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant

Project summary: This project focuses on exploring the role of the vaginal microbiome (VMB) in the risk of developing precancerous cervical lesions. It revealed that specific types of VMB offer protection against cervical lesion development for white women but not for Black women.

Project 2
Funding Source: National Cancer Institute

Project Summary: This project aims to investigate the influence of daily stress experiences and the cortisol psycho-endocrine pathway, on the VMB. It seeks to understand how stress affects differential rates of precancerous cervical lesions among different racial groups.

Project 3
Funding Source: V Foundation

Project Summary: This project further explores the potential mediating role of VMB and HPV dynamics in the psycho-endocrine pathway that links stress to regression of precancerous cervical lesions.

Project 4
Funding Source: Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancer

Project Summary: This project focuses on assessing the relationship between the VMB and cellular proliferation markers, p16 and ki67. It aims to understand this relationship within the context of stress experiences.

Co-Investigators: Jessica G. LaRose, PhD and Sonya Hung, Ph.D.

Funding Source: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Project Summary: Grounded in formative work and partnership with our advisory board, we designed a multilevel intervention to promote hydration. Using a stepped wedge, cluster randomized controlled trial, we will now test the effectiveness of the intervention within 12 randomly selected, matched Title I elementary schools serving predominately Black and Latine students from lower income backgrounds who all receive free meals (N=~6400 students).

Co-Project Investigator: Kellie Carlyle, PhD

Funding Source: Department of Justice

Project Summary: Many girls become involved with the juvenile justice system through the trauma-to-prison pipeline, which describes myriad forms of abuse and trauma that girls disproportionately experience and how their normal reactions to these traumas are criminalized through intersecting gendered, racial, and socioeconomic structural inequities. This project seeks to disrupt the trauma-to-prison pipeline by (1) providing intervention programming to system-involved girls; (2) training Department of Juvenile Justice staff about the pipeline and how to respond to girls in trauma-informed ways; and (3) building community capacity in high-poverty areas for changing the social contexts influencing public safety and the criminalization of trauma.

Co-Project Investigator: Kellie Carlyle, PhD

Funding Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Project Summary: Sexual abuse of students perpetrated by school employees is an overlooked public health issue with a lack of rigorously evaluated interventions to reduce child victimization. This study will evaluate Praesidium’s Armatus® Learn to Protect program, a program focused on the prevention of school employee-perpetrated CSA, misconduct, and exploitation of students. Built upon an ecological model of prevention, the intervention educates adults about enforcing school policies, monitoring staff, hiring and screening new employees, and addressing sexual and physical boundary-crossing. The multisite, randomized controlled trial will include 95 school districts and examine official records and self-reports of school employee CSA and boundary-crossing behaviors as primary outcomes. Results of this study will provide the first rigorous evidence for a prevention program focused on school employee-perpetrated CSA of students. 

Multiple Principal Investigators: Jessica G. LaRose, PhD and Maghboeba Mosavel, PhD

Funding Source: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)

Project Summary: Grounded in a decade of community-based participatory research, this is a cluster randomized trial designed to test the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of a novel grassroots intervention delivery model to reduce adiposity and improve cardiometabolic risk for majority Black residents in an under-resourced community setting.