NIH To Host Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (BSSR) Festival, December 8 & 9

The festival, hosted by OBSSR and in collaboration with the NIH BSSR Coordinating Committee, will showcase exciting research results, emerging research areas, and innovations in health related BSSR. Presenters were selected from nominations made by various NIH Institutes and Centers to highlight impactful BSSR funded across NIH.

On Thursday, December 8, NIH OBSSR Acting Director Christine Hunter, Ph.D., ABPP, will deliver opening remarks, and will moderate a “Fireside Chat on Health Communications” with Alix Spiegel. Alix is a public radio producer and science journalist who was one of the founding producers of “This American Life” and a human behavior reporter for National Public Radio’s science desk. Over the course of her career in public radio, she has won many awards including a George Foster Peabody Award, a Livingston Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. After a series of scientific presentations spread across two sessions, Dr. Hunter will conclude the first day of the festival with a “State of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (BSSR) at NIH” presentation.

Other notable BSSR presenters on the first day of the festival include:

Thursday, December 8
Session 1: Social Connection

• Aging and the social brain: The role of social networks in Alzheimer’s disease.
  Brea Perry, Ph.D., Indiana University.
• Endogenous opioids and close social connections: randomized clinical trials with naltrexone.
  Tristen Inagaki, Ph.D., San Diego State University.

Session 2: Mental and Emotional Health

• Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement Targets Addiction by Restructuring Reward from Hedonic Pleasure to Self-Transcendent Meaning.
  Eric Garland, Ph.D., LCSW, The University of Utah.

• The Power of Positivity in the Context of Pediatric Chronic Pain.
  Laura E. Simons, Ph.D., Stanford University Medical School.

• Patients’ Reactions to Letters Communicating Collateral Findings of Pragmatic Clinical Trials: A National Web-Based Survey.
  Juli Bollinger, M.S., Johns Hopkins University.

NIEHS Director Richard Woychik, Ph.D., will deliver the NIH Institute and Center Director keynote address on Friday, December 9. Dr. Woychik oversees federal funding for biomedical research to discover how the environment influences human health and disease. Following Dr. Woychik’s remarks, we’ll hear more distinguished BSSR presentations on day two of the festival.

Friday, December 9
Session 3: Session 3: Social Determinants of Health

• Intersecting Dynamics, Difficult Conundrums: Increasing Racial, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexual Diversity in HIV Cure-Related Research with Analytical Treatment Interruptions.
  Karine Dubé, DrPH, MPhil, University of California San Diego.

• Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease.
  Tiffany Powell-Wiley, M.D., M.P.H., National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH.

• COVID-19-Related Victimization, Racial Bias, and Drug Use.
  Brenda Curtis, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH.

Session 4: Measurement in BSSR

• Suicide and the Agent-Host-Environment Triad: Leveraging Surveillance Sources to Inform Prevention.
  Katherine Keyes, Ph.D., Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

• Congruence of Neighborhood Disadvantage and Individual Objective Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Chronic Low Back Pain.
  Edwin Aroke, Ph.D., The University of Alabama at Birmingham.

• Category Selective Regions of the Ventral Pathway are Present Within a Few Months of Birth.
  Nancy Kanwisher, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The full festival agenda can be viewed at https://www.scgcorp.com/OBSSRFestival2022/Agenda.

Individuals who need reasonable accommodation to participate in this event should contact Danielle Johnikin at djohnikin@scgcorp.com and/or (301) 670-4990 by November 28, 2022. If you have questions about registering or accessing this event, please contact Danielle Johnikin at djohnikin@scgcorp.com.

Register to attend and view the festival agenda and speaker biographies: https://www.scgcorp.com/OBSSRFestival2022/Registration. You will receive a confirmation email after you register. Information about connecting to the Zoom webinar will be sent to your email address closer to the meeting date.

Register