Co-Investigator and Evaluator: Sonya Hung, Ph.D.

Funding Source: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NIHLBI), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)

Project Summary: The grant funds a community-based clinical trial designed to coordinate asthma care for children ages 5-11 in Richmond, VA, factoring in their family, home, community and medical services. The study employs interventions that have been proven effective in other cities, but were customized to address the barriers and challenges faced by urban Richmond families of children with asthma.

Children will participate for one year and outcomes will be assessed to determine the program’s impact. Partnerships with Richmond area organizations will help ensure the long-term sustainability of the program and its findings.

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.  

Co-Principal Investigators: Katherine Y. Tossas, Ph.D., Maria D. Thomson, Ph.D.

Funding Source: Jeffress Trust

Project Summary: A collaborative project with the Chickahominy Tribe which aims to explore cancer risk perceptions and experiences of Charles City County residents through semi-structured qualitative interviews, structured community surveys, and water sample collection.

Watch to learn more about the project.

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: Children’s Health Research Institute

Project Summary: This study includes extensive community-engaged formative work, including conducting meetings of our Community Advisory Board, partnering with students to develop healthy hydration marketing, and co-designing components of a school-based hydration intervention. This will be followed by a pilot cluster randomized control trial to test the preliminary effectiveness of the resulting intervention to promote positive changes in water intake, zBMI, and dental caries.

Principal Investigator: Maghboeba Mosavel, PhD

Funding Source: DentaQuest Institute, Inc.

Project Summary: There are several strategies that the Petersburg Oral Health Engagement Project has used to strengthen the community voice and use a social justice lens. 1) The strategy of utilizing micro grantees. This strategy is focused on empowerment and creating ownership and relevance of the health issue and at the same time acknowledging local assets. 2) Oral Health Champions. Identifying members of the community most affected by oral health disparities and providing them with training to advocate on behalf of this concern is a strategy that recognizes the assets of insiders, their enhanced credibility with the local community as well as with legislators.

Principal Investigator: Maghboeba Mosavel, PhD

Funding Source: DentaQuest Institute, Inc.

Project Summary: The proposed work plan, methods and activities are centrally informed by evidence-based knowledge of community engagement which highlights the importance of learning from and with communities. With the Petersburg Oral Health Engagement Project, the outcomes have demonstrated the success of these engagement strategies which ultimately is geared towards building trusting relationships and building capacity towards changing power dynamics within the local context. These strategies intentionally spotlights the multi-dimensional lived experiences of marginalized groups and prioritize it for dialogue and action. Second, the engagement process takes time and often is regarded as “slow” compared to more traditional top-down research approaches which values data sometimes at the cost of building trusting relationships and long-term community benefit. We are proposing five strategies (methods) that have been highly successful in the Petersburg Oral Health Engagement project to build capacity and create awareness about the interconnectedness of oral health inequities and social determinants of health and thus inform local advocacy at multiple levels towards policy and practice changes.

Principal Investigator: Vanessa B. Sheppard, PhD

Funding Source: University of Kentucky

Project Summary: The Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center (VCUMCC) will serve as a regional site for the Geographic Management of Cancer Health Disparities (GMaP) Region 1 North Hub, based at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center (UKMCC). The collaboration will increase opportunities within the GMaP Region 1 North catchment area to attract underrepresented trainees/students and investigators to the biomedical cancer enterprise. It will develop resources and linkages to increase biospecimen and cancer health disparities research and education in underserved and minority communities in the region, in partnership with NCI National Outreach Network (NON) Community Health Educators (CHEs) and other strategic partners. It will increase disparities-related information dissemination and resource/best practice sharing within the region to promote resource efficiencies and increase awareness of regional funding, training, and job opportunities in the biomedical cancer enterprise.

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. 

Principal Investigator: Katherine Y. Tossas, PhD

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

Project Summary: The proposed diversity supplement will characterize the association between the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) with preterm birth (PTB) and explore race as a moderator. It will also estimate the direct and indirect contributions of the vaginal microbiome and inflammation to the association between HPV and PTB. Findings may support either the need to develop an HPV vaccine with broader subtype coverage and/or the need for tailored vaccine interventions by race. It will also provide information on the predominant path of future focus (microbiome or inflammation), towards the development of clinical interventions or early diagnostic tools.

*This funded project is a diversity supplement off of the R01 “Global Omics and Viromics Initiative on Pregnancy” from Gregory A. Buck, Ph.D., Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Principal Investigator: Dina T. Garcia, PhD

Funding Source: Society of Directors of Research in Medical Education

Project Summary:  Health care professionals have a role in dismantling racism and its impact on health inequities through anti-racist practices in clinical care. Medical students and clinicians across the nation have increasingly called for the inclusion of health equity and racism in medical education. The objective of this study is to review the literature to identify and characterize anti-racism curricula that have been developed, implemented, and evaluated along the educational continuum from undergraduate to graduate medical education. Findings will inform future diversity, equity, and inclusion practices across medical schools. 

Principal Investigator: Dina T. Garcia, PhD

Funding Source: Wright Center Endowment Fund of the Virginia Commonwealth University

Project Summary: People living with HIV (PLH) have a higher risk of developing oral conditions. However, there is limited information on how oral health impacts health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and engagement throughout the HIV care continuum among PLH. This pilot study will use mixed methods to 1) Explore knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards oral health in relation to HIV health among PLH; and 2) Examine the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) of PLH.

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. 

Co-Investigator: Jessica G. LaRose, PhD

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

Project Summary: This is a randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy of a novel behavioral economics mHealth intervention and a standard mHealth intervention for weight loss over 12 months in adults from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.