Postdoctoral Fellows Present their Research and the Work Ahead
The Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing’s (ISGMH) new cohort of postdoctoral fellows Ji-Young Lee, Ph.D.; Christopher Owens, Ph.D., M.P.H.; and Joshua Schrock, Ph.D., M.P.H., presented at the Current Issues in LGBTQ Health lecture series event hosted on October 15, 2020.
Ji-Young Lee
Ji-Young Lee is a postdoctoral fellow at ISGMH working with the Keep it Up! and SMART projects. She received her Ph.D. in Prevention Science and Community Health and MSPH at the University of Miami. During her graduate training, Lee’s research focused on bridging the boundaries that have traditionally divided behavioral and biomedical approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention among sexual minority men who use stimulants. In her talk, Lee discussed the impacts of parent-child tension on sexual minority young males’ mental health during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The study aimed to examine whether perceived sexual orientation related tension at home was associated with increased levels of depression during the COVID-19 quarantine period.
“We found that higher levels of sexual orientation related tension at home (SORTH) was associated with worsening depression during the COVID-19 sequester period relative to pre-COVID. Our study found that regardless of mothers’ or fathers’ rejection, higher levels of SORTH was significantly associated with higher levels of depression,” said Lee.
Christopher Owens
Christopher Owens is a postdoctoral scholar at ISGMH and received his Ph.D. in Health Behavior and his M.P.H. in Behavioral, Social and Community Health from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. Owens’ research focuses on rural HIV prevention and care and rural SGM heath. He has conducted studies exploring the rural PrEP care continuum, the rural HIV care continuum, and sexual history taking among rural providers. In his talk, Owens discussed non-urban sexual and gender minority (SGM) health and wellbeing and the importance of establishing community academic partnerships to examine the health of non-urban SGM communities.
“We know that non-urban SGM folks have poor health outcomes compared to their urban counterparts. Lack of insurance options, financial assistance programs, LGBTQ+ competent care, and transportation, as well as stigma, social dynamics, and discrimination can prevent non-urban SGM folks from even accessing the healthcare they need,” said Owens.
In his study, Owens conceptualized access to PrEP from how people heard about PrEP, going to a primary care provider for a PrEP prescription, to attending 3-month follow-up appointments. PrEP care continuum stages are separately published: awareness and uptake article; health care access and experience article; adherence and retention article.
Joshua Schrock
Joshua Schrock is a postdoctoral research fellow at ISGMH and received his Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Oregon and an M.P.H. in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Emory University. His research focuses on the connections between social context, physiology, and health. His work at ISGMH investigates risk factors and health outcomes associated with systemic inflammation among young sexual minority males, trans women, and non-binary individuals participating in the RADAR project.
In his talk, Schrock discussed his research on inflammation, traumatic events, and mental health in the RADAR cohort. Experiencing a traumatic event is one of the strongest predictors for high levels of stress and depression. Elevated threat sensitivity may also amplify negative mental health effects. This led to Schrock’s hypothesis that, all else equal, greater systemic inflammation amplifies the impact of traumatic events on mental health.
“I was predicting that there would be a synergistic interaction between an inflammation marker and traumatic event counts in predicting depression. The results suggest that the trauma amplifying effects of inflammation may be more specific to pathways that directly modulate behavior motivation perception and the central nervous system,” said Schrock.