Thursday, May 23, 2024 9am to 10am
About this Event
8 E Packer Ave, Bethlehem, PA 18015
https://health.lehigh.edu/faculty/career-opportunitiesA candidate for the College of Health postdoctoral postion, AFFDP is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes located in Northwest Montana and a doctoral candidate in an Interdisciplinary Health Ph.D. Program. They have an academic background in exercise science and nutrition. The candidate has collaborated with Indigenous communities across Montana and Arizona, including their own tribal community, since starting their academic journey. Broadly, the candidate's interests are focused on reducing health disparities and improving health equity through tribal-university partnerships and multisectoral collaborative efforts that address public health concerns in Indigenous populations. The majority of their work is focused on nutrition-related chronic disease prevention and control in Indigenous communities through evidence-based and community- informed approaches and interventions. Specifically, the candidate’s efforts to enhance healthcare and chronic disease prevention and control in Indigenous communities has involved using community-based participatory research principles, fostering long-term collaborative partnerships, and utilizing community workgroups and advisory boards to ensure that the work is community informed, culturally grounded, and sustainable. Through community-engaged approaches and tribal-university collaborations, their hope is that their current and future research can produce changes for healthier and more equitable communities and institutions. The candidate was recently awarded a University’s Most Promising Graduate Student Research Scholar Award for their dissertation work which focuses on the intersection of type 2 diabetes and certain cancers in Indigenous populations in Arizona. They will defend their dissertation in June of 2024 and graduate with distinction.
Research Presentation: "Cancer Risk Among Indigenous Populations Living with Type 2 Diabetes in the Southwest"
Abstract: Type 2 diabetes mellites (T2D) is a serious health inequity in Indigenous communities in the United States and contributes to the development of a wide variety of comorbid conditions, including several types of cancer. Despite the growing epidemiological and clinical evidence that shows the link between T2D and increased cancer risk, the focus on cancer care and screenings in standard diabetes care and education practices is limited. Furthermore, a growing body of literature has shown that diabetes-associated cancer risk differs between racial and ethnic diabetic populations. However, the contribution of diabetes on cancer risk in Indigenous populations is largely unknown. This presentation will describe two projects: 1) a community-based participatory research project, which involved a collaborative effort between the Hopi Tribe and Northern Arizona University to develop and pilot the Ööqalat’ Qa’tsit Yesni (Living a Strong Life) Curriculum to enhance local efforts to prevent and control diabetes and cancer; and 2) an epidemiological study, which aims to assess the relationship between T2D and certain cancers (breast, colorectal, and endometrial cancers) in Indigenous Medicaid beneficiaries in Arizona. The results of the health education curriculum pilot study support the efficacy of the curriculum. This health education curriculum and the collaborative design process could be used by other Indigenous communities to support positive health outcomes among their citizens. Once completed, the epidemiological study could demonstrate the feasibility of using state Medicaid data to measure incidence of T2D and cancer morbidity among Indigenous populations.
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