Nursing

REU 2021 Has Been Postponed Until 2022 – Learn More Here

Please Review the REUs and Select Your Choice Below for an REU to Apply For

Technology to Enhance Self-management Trials (TEST) program

Primary PIs: Angela Starkweather / Xiaomei Cong / Ruth Lucas

Our lab works on developing technologies and interventions for managing pain. As part of this mission, we have several projects that could be marketable. We have developed a general pain management program with modules that need to be developed for mobile devices with capabilities for online chat / Telehealth consultation / and recording in electronic medical record in order to be part of a multimodal pain management program. These programs would be of great interest to public health programs (as state and federal level) because they are tied to HealthyPeople 2020 goals. Another area that we believe would be marketable is a technology to facilitate community partnerships that use these interventions and collect data on outcomes. For this project, we are interested in creating an infrastructure in which student internships are designed around the intervention and community, and the health intervention is promoted for uptake by community members in order to both collect ongoing data as well as a social network of support for people with pain disorders.

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Understanding the Role of Psychology in Health Behaviors and Pain Management

Primary PI: Natalie Shook

Dr. Shook’s lab is focused on understanding affective and cognitive processes that influence psychological well-being and health. During the summer, students will have the opportunity to work on two projects and gain experience with human subjects research. The first project will test how mindfulness potentially improves pain management and influences health behaviors. The second project will examine whether the emotion of disgust plays a role in preventing infectious disease and increasing preventative health behaviors.

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Project — Title to be Decided

Primary PIs: Steven Kinsey & Wendy Henderson

Cannabis and its extracts are increasingly marketed as treatments for a broad range of ailments. While researchers investigate its possible positive health outcomes, it is increasingly clear that repeated cannabis use induces drug dependence. As in people, mice repeatedly exposed to cannabinoids undergo withdrawal. Current measures of withdrawal involve hand scoring by trained technicians, and one of the goals of this study is to automate this process and develop a novel burrowing test apparatus. In addition, it is largely unknown what effects repeated cannabinoid exposure have on the bacterial microflora of the gut, or the “second brain”. In addition to modulating metabolism and inflammation, the gut microbiome affects behavior. Recent advances in genetic sequencing now allow for nuanced analysis of the functional outcomes of altered microflora. Better understanding the interactions between cannabinoids, behavior, and gut microflora will be used to develop new, non-opioid pain treatments.

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